The Stormbreaker Chronicles, Book II
by DoctorPortal
Summary: Taking place three years after the events of Book I, this follows the members of the Stormbreaker crew as they try desperately to reunite, all whilst evading capture by Imperial Forces. If you haven't read Book I of this series, I highly recommend you do that first! Otherwise, none of this will make any sense. Anyway, this is Book II of The Stormbreaker Chronicles!
1. Chapter One: Haveren Day

_The_

 _Stormbreaker_

 _Chronicles_

 _Book II_

By Noah Harston

 **Chapter One**

Nara rolled over onto her side, kicking up dust on the dirty mattress surface she was lying down on. She looked at the old clock that sat at her bedside. the dim, low-quality display read 11:59 P.M., written in blocky digital numerals. She stared at it intently, trying to distract her mind from all the thoughts that were running rampant through it. The clock changed, and the date at the bottom of the display changed over. 12:00 A.M., Day 98, 25 A.B.Y..

Three years since the day the _Stormbreaker_ exploded.

It was now "Haveren Day", an Imperial-enforced holiday celebrating the life of the admiral who'd been killed in action…

When Nova had sacrificed himself to save them.

She couldn't stop seeing the explosion. Her dreams had been the same for as long as she could remember. Always the same dream, never faltering, never changing.

But it wasn't from the perspective the others had seen on that fateful day. Instead, she saw the explosion from close up, as if she were floating in the nebula, less than a kilometer from the ship. And over and over again, she was forced to watch in horror as the ship collided headlong into the gargantuan _Seventh Sanctum_ , resulting in an explosion which reduced everything in its path to dust. Debris from both ships was spread for thousands of kilometers in all directions, and Nara could only watch as time and time again, the huge chunk of hull plating which had the _Stormbreaker_ 's name carved into it spiraled off and hit her, which always awoke her with a shock, drenched in a cold sweat.

Nara sat up in the bed and swung her legs over the side. Quietly so as not to wake the others, she stepped out of the bedroom and into the tiny kitchen area of the flat the crew had been laying low in for some time. Nara switched on the coffee maker and brewed herself a cup, before going out onto the balcony right outside the door. With a heavy sigh, she sat down on the cold hard floor, looking through the transparisteel railing at the station corridor below.

Taking sips from her mug every few seconds, Nara sat in the cold, dark corridor for what felt like ages. Then, she heard the door open behind her, and she turned to look to see who it was. It was Rei.

"You too, huh?" she asked, a steaming mug in her hand as well. Nara simply nodded, and Rei plopped down next to her.

"Same dream?" Rei inquired, trying to make eye contact with her best friend. Nara nodded again, not returning the look. Rei sighed.

"Well, shit," she said, "I… I'd say something right now, but… Well, I don't have any force powers, which means I don't get crazy and terrifying visions like you and Winson do. So, honestly, I have no idea what you're going through right now. But I do know this….," She reached over and gently turned Nara's head to look at her, locking eyes with her.

"I'm here for you. We all are. Whatever the circumstances, no matter the consequences. We're here for you, Nara. All you have to do is ask."

Nara's face reflected a look of gratitude, but it was nearly totally consumed by the feelings grief, sadness, confusion, and terror that swirled and churned behind her eyes. She leaned in and rested her head on Rei's shoulder. Rei wrapped her arms around Nara, planting a hiss on her head. They stayed that way for several moments, before Nara broke the hug. She stared down at the different floors visible from below them through the transparent railing. Finally, she spoke.

"You know," she began, her voice almost a whisper, "Ever wondered if there's even the slightest chance that…. that maybe, just maybe... he could have survived?"

"Well, I mean, we know that he survived, right?" Remember the pendant? It was glowing for a short while back at the memorial site. He… he has to be alive.., right?"

Nara's face took on a more dejected look.

"...Right?" Rei repeated. Nara sighed heavily.

"I don't know, Rei," Nara said, looking up towards the ceiling. "I… I've been reading up on stuff about force and spirits and stuff. So far, what I've found all leads me towards Force Ghosts."

"Force _ghosts_?" Rei inquired. "Like, haunty-spooky-spirit stuff?"

"Yeah," Nara said. "Apparently, there are some Jedi who can learn this technique and become these powerful apparitions after they die, but virtually none of them ever actually managed to reappear as physical entities. As much as I don't want to believe it, I fear that what we saw with the pendant may have just been Nova's spirit returning to the force. As in, the glow signified that his energy was _leaving_ the pendant, which is why it isn't still glowing."

Rei attempted to form a response for several moments, but gave up on it. Instead she just sat quietly with her friend for a few moments, taking refuge in the companionable silence.

After several moments, Nara spoke again.

"So, like I said," she began, "do you think there's any possible way he could have survived?"

* * *

 _Meanwhile…_

 _Cataraan Orbital Station CT-177BX, 25 A.B.Y._

A tall figure stood alone, browsing shop windows along the concierge. He was tall, with moderate-length brown hair, which was relatively well-kept, but still showed signs of a lack of upkeep. He wore a long, dark green hooded jacket, black cargo pants, and a pair of jet-black sunglasses over his eyes. Above him, a small display showed a live news feed.

"Hello, and welcome back to Imperial News Hour," the anchor began. "Today marks precisely three years since the day that our heroic leader, Vice Admiral Jonathan Van Haveren, was killed in action in an epic battle against a traitorous renegade by the name of Nova Xaris. It has since become Imperial tradition that, on this day each year, we celebrate the life and sacrifice of our glorious leader, who gave his live so that the traitorous scum would be cleansed from the galaxy. We now request a moment of silence in Admiral Haveren's honor."

The figure scoffed when he heard the anchor's request, and observed how few people actually participated in the moment of silence. Then he turned and walked down the corridor, and into the alleyway. Once he was out of sight, the figure spoke.

"Okay, Kaz, how are we doing?" he said.

A voice responded through bone-conduction speakers built into the glasses.

"We're fine," it said, "just like the last 80 times you asked..."

The figure in green pressed a button on the rim of his glasses, and the tint in the lenses dropped to none, revealing a pair of piercing, bright blue eyes.

"Kaz, what have I told you a thousand times?" he said, his voice a harsh whisper, "We're undercover."

"Oh, sure," Kaz said, "Of course we are! Because the Empire's _totally_ looking for us. I mean, it's so _obvious_ that we survived that gigantic explosion, you know, the one that completely obliterated a planet-sized star destroyer? Yeah, of course they're looking for us! Great deduction skills, Nova."

The figure looked around nervously at the mention of his name.

"Look, just play along, huh?" Nova said. "I don't want to cause any more trouble."

"Really?" Kaz replied, "Because I'm not sure you can, given the state of the others…."

"Wait, the others?" Nova asked. "What do you mean? What about the others?"

"See for yourself," Kaz said, and a readout on Nova's glasses indicated towards the news display.

"Wait, what?" Nova spun around to look at the display.

"In other news," the anchor said, "the remaining members of Xaris' crew are still at large, and have risen to the top of the Empire's Most Wanted list. If you see any of these criminals, contact Imperial Services immediately."

The feed showed security camera footage of Nara, D'razz, and Rei running from a group of Imperial Stormtroopers, dodging shots and firing back.

"Damn…," Nova said. "I honestly didn't expect that…."

"Of course you didn't," Kaz said. "And you wanna know why?"

Nova said nothing.

"Because," Kaz continued, "You weren't thinking of what would happen in the long-term when you sent them off like that. Yes, you saved them from the explosion, but you did so in plain view of the big Imperial leader-guy. And that means that the whole Imperial Army knows that they're still alive. And with the luck they seem to be having, that might turn out to be a worse fate than just flat-out exploding."


	2. Chapter Two: A Spark of Hope

**Author's Note:**

Hey, guys! It's been SO LONG! I know, I'm super sorry. It's ben really tough writing as of late, as I've been absorbed in so many other projects that I haven't had any extra time, but, at long last, I've got another chapter for you guys. Hope you all enjoy, and thanks again for all the support! Thanks!

~DoctorPortal

* * *

 **Chapter Two**

Nara and the rest of the crew had all made wardrobe changes. After much self-debate, Nara had decided to grow her hair out, and she had it dyed black. She kept her lightsaber in a concealed pocket in a long blue jacket she'd acquired, which covered up the tattered remains of her old crew t-shirt, which she'd refused to abandon. She looked completely different, apart from the same powerful, caramel-brown eyes. Winson had shaved his moustache, and now wore a long, dark-brown trench coat over a forest-green shirt and black cargo pants. Nara still couldn't quite wrap her head around just how different Winson looked without facial hair. Rei had cut her hair, and had had it done in a bob cut, much like what Nara had worn previously. Couple that with a long, black coat, and dark-gray cargo pants, as well as a pair of dark-tinted glasses, and she was all but unrecognizable.

Lin and Rose had contributed, too. Lin had grown her hair out as well, and dyed it brown. Rose had dyed hers as well, from rose-golden-blonde to the same shade of brunette as her mother's. Rose had acquired a pair of colored contacts, which were supposed to turn her eyes average-looking brown, but her eyes were so vibrant that with the contacts it made them a sort of honey-golden-orange. D'razz had acquired a pair of color contacts, which, when put in, turned his eyes from bright, technologically-enhanced turquoise to a deep, fiery orange-red. Couple that with a burnt-orange jacket with black markings, a few fake facial tattoos that added to his old ones, and a pair of dark-tan utility pants, and he looked like a completely different person.

All this meant that, for the moment, the Empire was off their trail. But they wouldn't be in the clear for long, especially if they didn't get a different ride.

Shortly after the _Stormbreaker_ 's destruction, the _Epsilon_ became an incredibly well-known ship. Imperial news broadcasts had sent out its transponder code, its appearance, everything, and the ship could be recognized nearly anywhere. Eventually, it got to the point that the ship became more of a liability than an assist, and as a result, they'd been forced to abandon it. A sad moment, especially for Nara, since it had been the gateway to her freedom, but since Nara had first activated a secret Nubian recall beacon that Imperial sensors couldn't detect, chances were the ship would likely be picked up by Kanson and returned to Naboo.

But for now, the crew had found a small flat they could lay low in onboard a small space station in the Outer Rim, where they'd been for several weeks.

They all sat on small chairs which sat around a small, dirty holotable. On it, D'razz and Rei played a holographic card game. Something involving strange mythical creatures. Nara couldn't understand it to save her life, so she didn't try to. Winson was in a quiet meditation, and Nara was simply allowing herself to be alone with her thoughts. The exploding-ship dream still haunted her, but it had been slightly different the past few nights. She'd been seeing the ship from different angles lately, and each time she'd noticed something strange every time she ship was about to explode that she hadn't seen before.

Each time, less than a second before the ship exploded, she kept seeing a mysterious piece of debris emit a bright flash of light, before then vanishing altogether. She couldn't be certain, but Nara swore it looked remarkably like an escape pod. But again, she wasn't sure. After all, what kind of escape pod could just vanish like that?

Despite the disguises, they all still looked like hell. They had little in the way of cleaning off, since the flat had water rations intended for only one person, not six, and it showed.

But they tried their best. And at the moment, they were staying in the flat so they would be there to accept a transmission. They had no idea when it would come, but it would. And so, they endured these harsh living conditions, their strong sense of hope being the one thing keeping them together.

They all sat around the dirty holotable in the center of the flat's main room. The low-resolution display showed feed of what seemed like simple radio disturbance, but which Rei was struggling to manipulate, hoping to find some sort of subcarrier signal. She sat at its controls, twisting dials, moving sliders, trying to tune in further to the strange, static-like signal. After several minutes of work, a heavily-distorted voice could be made out amongst the static.

It was Kanson's voice.

"Hello… Hello?" he said. "Hello? Nara? Oh, right, this is a recording…."

The whole crew sat in stunned silence.

"Nara..," Kanson said, "I sincerely hope you get this, because I have some news for you. First of all, thanks for activating the recall beacon. Thanks to you, some of my crew were able to recover the _Epsilon_ and ship it home. Rest assured, she's safe now. We've got her under close guard..."

Nara's eyes welled up, and a single tear streaked down her right cheek. The message continued.

"But I understand. Of _course_ you had to abandon the _Epsilon_. You were never going to be safe with a ship as dirty as that one as your main mode of transport. But I'd be willing to wager a guess that you don't yet have any other method of transportation. If I had to guess, I'd say you've been stowing aboard freighters. But as a big man in the starship industry, I hear a lot of rumors of all sorts of antique, last-surviving craft abandoned all across the galaxy. Most of them turn out to be false, but the newest one seems to be onto something."

The message paused, the low-quality terminal struggling to buffer the message.

Nara leaned forward in her seat, waiting for the message to continue. Finally, it did.

"The rumor states that there's an ancient stealth prototype hidden in a cave somewhere in the Unknown Regions, on a planet called Ilum. It's said to be some sort of sacred Jedi planet, one full of all sorts of crystals, many used in lightsabers. But that's not what I'm sending you there for. At the end of this transmission, I'll put in a set of coordinates I've assembled from my various sources. Believe me, This is _definitely_ worth checking out, for one particular reason…"

The message took another few seconds to buffer, before continuing.

"I have reason to believe that I know who started the rumor circulating, as well as what you're likely to find there aboard that ship. I think it may be your captain, Nova, trying to communicate with you. And yes, I can conform that he is, in fact, alive. I've got eyes all over that've been watching him for some time. But don't worry. He's safe. And he's been traveling with that computer-guy for a while now. Unfortunately, I don't know where he is, otherwise I'd just tell you that. But nevertheless, I'm fairly certain that he's known about this ship for a long time, and I'm willing to bet he's left some sort of note, or transmission, or _something_ , and he wants you all to find it."

Nara was filled with so much emotion, so many different, overwhelming feelings, that her eyes were glowing softly purple. Tears streamed down her face as Kanson wrapped up his message.

"The coordinates I've assembled will follow this message. Good luck, Nara, and may the Force be with you. Kanson out."

The holographic image vanished, and the crackling audio was immediately replaced with a string of tones, blips and dashes, which kept looping every 15 seconds or so.

"Winson…" Nara addressed, wiping her eyes dry with her sleeve, "Can you tell what it's saying?"

"It's definitely a set of coordinates," Winson said. "But they're a long ways away. Getting transport there will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible."

"We have to try," Nara said. She stood and faced the group. "Guys, this is the moment we've waited for. Do you think we have enough in us for one more big push?"

The others exchanged wary glances, but then Rose suddenly narrowed her eyes, a look of fresh determination across her face. She looked over to D'razz, then looked over to Rei, then Lin, each of them taking on a similar determination upon eye contact. Then, D'razz stood up and faced Nara.

"We're ready," he said.

* * *

"So, Nova, do you think it worked?" Kaz asked. Nova walked through the corridors of the station until he made his way back to the hotel where they had been staying. Upon entering the room, Nova sat down on the bed with a heavy sigh, and lay on his back, legs dangling off the side.

"Honestly, Kaz?" Nova replied, "I don't know. I sure as hell hope so, but I just don't know."

Nova took off the glasses and set them down next to him. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small, puck-sized disk, which had a large bulb at its center. He unwound a thin cord from its side and plugged it into a port hidden behind a small panel on the arm of the glasses. As soon as it was connected, there was a soft ping, after which the bulb lit up, and Kaz was projected in front of Nova. Kaz walked over and sat down next to him.

"We really need to get me a more mobile holoprojector," Kaz quipped, trying to lighten the mood. But when he noticed the despondent look on Nova's face, he dropped the act.

"They will find it," Kaz reassured him, "I know they will. And then they're going to get our message, and they're going to be okay. The repair instructions you included in that transmission were spot-on. Believe me, I checked. Multiple times."

Nova said nothing in response. He simply looked over at Kaz, then back up the the room's dirty ceiling. After several moments, he sighed heavily, and finally spoke up.

"I hope you're right, Kaz," he said, "because this is all I've got."


	3. Chapter Three: The Ice Hangar

**Chapter Three: The Message**

It had taken weeks, but finally the crew had managed to find a pilot willing to transport them to Ilum. He was a tall, friendly looking man named Alex Namara, and he seemed to them to be an answer to their prayers. He said that not only would he transport them to Ilum, but he'd do it free of charge, and asked for nothing in return. So now, the crew found themselves in a storage bay on Namara's ship, a Corellian YT-2400 Freighter, but with actual mattresses to sleep on. And they were en route to the planet.

Nara and Rei sat alone at a small holochess table, enjoying a moment of companionable silence, when Namara walked in.

"So," he said, his voice of moderately-pitch and full of youthfulness and charm, "what's a pair of lovely ladies like you two doing heading to Ilum?" He had a massive, smug grin on his face, one which made Nara have to restrain herself to prevent from punching him.

"If you weren't helping us for free," Nara said, "I'd knock that stupid smile right off your face…"

His smile became more warm and friendly at the remark.

"Why do you think I'm not charging you?" he joked, then pulled a chair over to the table, and sat down. He lost the grin, and his face took a much more serious look, with hints of concerned curiosity sprinkled in. When he spoke, his tone of voice made it clear that he genuinely wanted to help.

"But seriously, now," he said, "what are you all planning to do there? You all sure don't _look_ like treasure hunters. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say you're running from something. Because from the looks of things, you all have seen some serious shit, and you're clutching at every spark of hope you can get like it's a lifeline."

"That's because it is," Nara said, softly.

Alex's face took on a look of incredible sympathy, and his eyes reflected the fact that somehow, he completely understood.

"Hey," he said, leaning in across the table. Nara looked up at him.

"I know your pain. Believe me, I know."

Nara looked away again, and Alex sighed.

"Hey, you know what…," he added, "I don't know where, but I feel like I've seen you all before."

Rei looked up at him, finally speaking up.

"I'm not surprised," she said, "because we've been all over the news. And not in a good way."

Alex looked puzzled momentarily, but then his eyes widened. He turned to face Nara.

"You… you're that girl, right? The one the Empire's been looking all over for?" he asked.

Nara nodded, and Alex noticed she was shuddering, and tears were streaming down her face. Rei pulled her in to hug her. Nara leaned against her friend and sobbed quietly, and Alex leaned back away from them. He knew better than to interrupt a moment like this.

After several moments, Nara managed to regain her composure. She detached from Rei, and sat back up. FInally, she looked Alex dead in the eye.

"To answer your question," she said, her voice still recovering, "My name is Nara Mukure, Jedi Knight and tertiary heir to the throne of Naboo. It is a pleasure to meet you."

* * *

They arrived on Ilum without further incident. And after equipping the crew with some much-needed supplies and clothing layers, Alex met with all of them at the cargo ramp to the ship.

"You sure you don't want me to go with you?" he asked.

"We're sure," Rei replied, "you've been too good to us already. But we appreciate the offer."

"Well, then, in that case," Alex said, "at least let me hook you up with one last thing."

He walked over to Nara, and handed her a tiny pad. It was a tiny, glass card, which had Alex's name and personal contact information. She inspected the card, then looked up at him, brows furrowed. Alex smiled.

"I'm not going to ask for yours," Alex said, "So I'm just giving you mine. If you ever, and I mean _ever_ , need anything, that number goes straight to my personal terminal. And I can tell you now, I don't generally give that one out. The only other people who have that number are my parents." He gave her a warm smile, and stuck out his hand. Nara shook it, and looked him firmly in the eye. Her own eyes gleamed with gratitude.

"Thank you, Alex Namara." Nara said.

"You are welcome, Nara Mukure." he pulled up and kissed her hand gently.

Nara rolled her eyes, but then nodded to him, and stepped off the ramp. As soon as she did, Alex went to the panel at the top and began to retract it. Just before the ramp closed, Nara and the others watched as he shot them all a two-fingered salute.

The crew began treading away from the freighter, and a moment later the ship's repulsorlift engines fired up, and the ship rose into the air. It turned, pivoted up slightly, and the main drive engines fired. The ship flew off, becoming smaller and smaller as it rose into the sky, until finally it disappeared behind the clouds.

* * *

The trek took them several hours, all of which were spent in the freezing cold, with strong, biting winds blowing them around and obscuring vision in all directions. As a result, what would have normally been a 4-hour hike took nearly twice as long. But at the end of it, the crew found themselves at the bottom of a huge, crater-like valley, with huge cliff faces rising up all around them. They made their way over to one of the massive walls, and Rei stopped dead in her tracks in front of it.

Rei stared at the tracking beacon displayed on her terminal.

"Says here that it's behind this wall," she shouted over the winds.

Nara didn't reply, and instead walked over to the wall. She pressed her hand against it, and closed her eyes. She focused intensely, searching for something. She wasn't sure what, but she knew she'd know it when she found it.

At first, she could only sense ice. But she broadened her scanning, and soon she found what she was looking for. A lever, buried nearly five feet within the ice. Reaching out to it with the Force, it took a lot more power than she'd anticipated. Clearly, this lever had not been moved in a long time, as ice was clogging up the mechanism. But finally, after some extreme force, the lever budged, then with an intense scraping sound, which was audible even through five feet of ice, the lever moved the rest of the way, resting at the opposite end with a resounding click.

Then, at first, nothing happened.

But then, Nara could hear the sounds of heavy machinery starting to move, as various whirring and clanking noises were heard, followed by multiple jets of steam rocketing out of the ice in the shape of a massive rectangle, which appeared carved into the ice. Then, the ice began to move.

First, a large, vertical mass of steam escaped through a previously invisible seam in the center of the other rectangular seam. Then, with a series of loud groans and scraping noises, the two ice chunks on either side slid straight back, into the cliff face, then opened sideways, like a set of enormous elevator doors. The crew stood in stunned astonishment as the giant ice-doors opened slowly, revealing a huge, completely dark room behind it. But then, as the ice doors retracted fully and came to a stop, another series of whines and whirring was heard as more machinery began spooling up. This time, a series of lights in the ceiling of the chamber began igniting in sequence, starting from the back of the chamber. When they had all been turned on, they illuminated an enormous hangar bay, which seemed like it was hundreds of years old, yet was still completely functional. Judging from the architecture, it appeared as though it had been designed to store and maintain hundreds of starfighters. Instead, a single ship sat cold and dark in the center of the chamber.

It looked ancient, and yet not at the same time. It was easily hundreds of years old, yet it looked more advanced and high-tech than anything they'd ever seen. Its appearance alone hinted at the incredibly advanced technology that sat within its hull. It looked more like something built in the distant future, that had time travelled back in time hundreds of years prior, only for the crew to find it now.

And it was beautiful. A soft, metallic silver body, with dark-colored cutouts along the sides and the rear. All over its body, there were accents that were clearly meant to glow when the ship was functional. And what's more, the crew could see design elements that they had seen before.

"What…. what is it?" D'razz breathed.

Lin's eyes were wider than any of theirs, and she barely managed a reply.

"This… This can't be real," she said, "the last of these was said to have been destroyed centuries ago…"

"What is it, Dr. Lin?" Nara inquired, not taking her eyes off the breathtakingly beautiful ship.

"It's…. It's an X-70B Phantom…." Lin breathed.

"A what?" Rei asked.

"An X-70B Phantom-Class Covert Operations Prototype," Lin said. "It's a type of ship which were only flown by the most elite of Imperial agents, back in the days of the Old Republic. It's fitted with some of the most advanced stealth technology ever constructed, as well as one of the most powerful computers ever placed into a starship. Couple that with a hyperdrive system that was the fastest ever made when it was new, and is still breakneck fast by today's standards, and what we've found is perhaps the last surviving model of one of the most secretive and mysterious starships ever made."

The boarding ramp was closed, but as soon as Nara moved over to inspect it, a holographic scanning grid appeared and read her like a book. Then, with a series of clicks and whirrs, the ramp lowered, and the crew made their way on board.

It was breathtakingly luxurious inside. And strangely, there was virtually no dust anywhere. All the surfaces appeared to have been very-recently cleaned, and what's more, the interior was also strangely familiar.

"This has to have been some of Nova's inspiration," Rei observed. "Both the interior and the exterior remind me so much of the _Stormbreaker_ …."

"Indeed," Winson agreed.

They all made it into a living room-of-sorts, with a familiar-looking holotable at its center. And, on the side of the holotable, a small, pulsating blue indicator informed of a new message.

Nara walked over to the holotable and pressed a button, and a holographic message began to play.

It showed a hooded figure, standing alone. It wore a long, dark coat, and a pair of black tinted glasses. They said nothing at first. But then, the figure reached up and lowered its hood. The tint in the glasses dropped to none revealing a pair of vibrant blue eyes. There was no question.

It was Nova.

"Hey there, guys...," he said.

* * *

"Hey there, guys," Nova's hologram said. "It's been a long time, huh?" On-screen Nova grinned, but there was an intense sadness behind his eyes, visible even on a hologram.

"If you're seeing this," the message continued, "It means that my stupid idea worked, and you've found the ice hangar. And to that, I say, nice work! This means that you're a massive step closer to finding me. And that…," Holo-Nova dropped the act, and looked down at his feet. He spoke in a softer tone, one which held mountains of regret and sadness.

"Kaz, I can't do this…," Nova said, and a voice responded aloud, each syllable marked by a green pulse on his glasses.

"You have to, Nova," it said. No doubt, it was Kaz's voice. "This is important…"

"I… I can't," Holo-Nova said. Even in the low-quality projector feed, they could see tears running down his face. He pulled a puck-shaped device with a large bulb out of his pocket and activated it, then turned and walked out of shot. Then, Kaz appeared from the device Nova had set down.

"Hey, guys," Kaz said. "I guess this one's up to me. So, uh, hi..! We, uh… we're okay, or, well, mostly…." Holo-Kaz turned to look off-screen, presumably to where Nova was, then faced back to them and continued.

"Okay, I'm not gonna lie," Holo-Kaz continued, "Nova's in bad shape. He's going through some crazy amounts of emotional turmoil. I've been storing myself in his glasses, mostly so I can keep an eye on his mental state. And it isn't pretty. He misses you guys, more than you can ever know. And I don't even want to imagine what he'd be like if I wasn't here with him. The fact is that the way Nova's life has worked out, he just seems to naturally gravitate towards isolation, no matter how much he tries to hang on to those he cares about. But I digress..."

The crew watched in silence. Nara sat closest to the screen, unable to cleanse her mind of the sight of Nova, and how depressed and distraught he seemed. It made her own emotional struggles she'd been dealing with look pale in comparison. She pushed the thought aside and turned her attention back to the message.

"If you guys are seeing this, then I congratulate you," Kaz resumed. "Welcome aboard the _Spectre_. She's the last of her kind; an Old-Imperial X-70B Phantom. A ship which can take you anywhere you want, whenever you want, and without anyone else ever knowing it. Nova and… err…. I mean, _I_ 'm recording this message on the holoterminal that you guys are presumably standing in front of. We just recently finished up a long series of repairs, but you guys will need to put the finishing touches on it. Instructions for those are in a separate file attached to this message. But once she's up and running, this ship will automatically home in on a subcarrier wave signal that's being transmitted by my little makeshift holoprojector here, one which the Empire can't trace, and will lead right you to us. And, if by some miracle you all manage to find this place, I urge you… please hurry. Nova's mental state may be at risk. Godspeed, you guys. Oh, and, uhh, may the Force be with you."

The message ended, and Holo-Kaz disappeared. In its place, a file folder was displayed above the holotable, which presumably contained the repair instructions.

Nara turned to face the rest of the group.

"So," she said, "You guys ready to get to work?"

* * *

The repair process had taken longer than they'd expected. It had turned out that, due to the ship's incredibly sleek and compact design, a large amount of the ship's technology was incredibly hard to access. But they'd pulled it off, and now Nara, Rose, and Rei were on the bridge, while Winson, Lin, and D'razz were down in the engine room.

"You know," Rei said, "I honestly think Nova just carbon-copied a bunch of the stuff from this ship and put it into the _Stormbreaker_. All this stuff is way too familiar."

Nara nodded, too busy with her console to give any more of a reply.

FInally, she keyed in a final sequence, and the bridge's primary lighting came on. But, strangely, the engines didn't ignite.

Nara's face took on a scowl, and she reached over and pressed the button for the intercom.

"D'razz?" she asked. "You told me you had the engines ready…"

"They are ready, Nara," D'razz replied, his voice emanating from a small speaker, "You just haven't activated them."

Nara looked dumbfounded for a moment, looking around frantically for a button, and didn't find one. Rei leaned over, studying the rows of physical buttons and toggle switches that sat to the side of the touch display that Nara was working off of. She noticed a small bank of five toggle switches. The one in the middle had a paddle-like shape to it, was bright red, and had 'Main Engine Start' inscribed in small, white letters. She reached over and pressed the switch down, which greeted her with a satisfying click. Then, she heard the sound of powerful engines spooling up.

Nara looked even more stunned. She looked over at Rei, who merely pointed at the bright red toggle switch. As soon as she saw it, Nara frowned, disappointed in herself.

"Really..?" she asked. "It was right there… the whole time…?"

"Yup," Rei said, a thin smile across her face.

Winson's voice came over the speakers.

"Finally found the ignition switch, did we?" he asked. Nara could hear the smile in his voice.

She muttered quietly to herself as she finished strapping into the copilot's chair. Rei did the same in the pilot's seat.

Rei picked up a small headset off the console and put it on, positioning the pic to her mouth.

"Alright, kids," she said, checking screens and flipping various switches, "Please place all chairs and tray tables into the fully-upright position, sit back, and enjoy the-"

"Shut up and fly, would you..?" Nara said, shooting her a thin smile.

Rei chuckled in response, and engaged the repulsorlift engines. Gravity briefly increased as the ship lifted off the ground. Rei pressed another button, and a series of whirrs followed by a large clunk confirmed the landing gear had been retracted. Then, she keyed in a sequence, and the large hangar doors in front of them began to retract. As they slid further and further outward, the snowy landscape stretched into the valley. Finally, the doors stopped moving, and Rei applied gently pressure to a large throttle lever on her left. The ship began to move forward. Rei delicately manipulated both the throttle lever and a small fine-maneuvering control stick to her right, and carefully maneuvered the ship out of the hangar.

As soon as the ship was clear, the doors automatically began to retract behind her.

Rei increased their altitude with the repulsorlifts, then pulled back on the yoke. The ship pitched back to match, and Rei tenderly applied pressure to the throttle. The ship began accelerating, rising higher and higher into the atmosphere until it broke through the clouds.

Moments later, once the _Spectre_ broke through the bonds of atmosphere, a series of blips and pings sounded from the terminal in front of Nara, and the display indicated it had locked on to a signal.

Nara looked over at Rei. She said nothing, but her eyes were filled with emotion.

"We've got him," Rei said. She looked over at Nara.

"Orders, captain?" she asked, a wide smile across her lips.

"Let's go get out boy," Nara replied.

An indicator on her console requested permission for the autopilot to take over. Rei hit the green "accept" button, and the control yoke and throttle lever retracted into her console. Suddenly, the main engines whined down, but were soon overtaken by the sounds of the hyperdrive, which spooled up and launched the ship forth, into the waiting arms of hyperspace, and onward to wherever Nova was waiting for them.


	4. Chapter Four: Reunion

**Chapter 4: Reunion**

Nova and Kaz had received the confirmation signal the moment the ship had locked on to them. There was no doubt: it was the _Spectre._ They'd done it. The crew had found the ship, and, more importantly, had gotten his message. Now, all he had to do was wait.

And wait he did. He and Kaz had been standing around near Gate 75C, which was almost always empty at this time of day. He'd sent a signal to the _Spectre_ to dock there once it arrived, so Nova knew he was in the right place, but alas, still no ship.

Time seemed to crawl, with Nova left to wander the waiting area of the otherwise empty section of the terminal. He'd already sent the identification and transit information to the _Spectre_ 's computer, and he'd hooked his glasses up to the traffic control feed, so he'd find out as soon as the station's sensors picked them up. All this meant that, for the first time in years, Nova was bored.

He paced for a while, twiddled his thumbs, took a nap, played games on his holoterminal, and then just sat doing nothing for what seemed like an eternity.

Nova let out a heavy sigh, then laid down flat on the bench. He switched on the microphone on his glasses.

"Kaz, how long have we been waiting here?" he asked.

"An hour and a half," Kaz replied casually.

"What?!" Nova sat bolt upright and looked at the clock. Sure enough, it had been only 92 minutes since he'd gotten there.

"How long until they get here?" Nova asked.

"Three more hours," Kaz replied nonchalantly.

"Ughhhhhh…." Nova groaned, and fell back flat onto the bench.

* * *

It finally came after nearly four-and-a-half hours of waiting.

Nova had very nearly drifted off to sleep when Kaz interrupted.

"Nova, traffic control's going nuts. Something's going on," he said.

Nova sat upright, his heart suddenly racing.

"Show me," he said.

The speakers in his glasses suddenly came alive with the chatter of the station's traffic control, who were all babbling about the unscheduled approach of an unknown craft, coming out of hyperspace. Nova rushed to the displays against the wall, and that's when he saw it.

The silver and gray, ghost-like shape. The glowing blue accents. The minimal heat signature.

It was the _Spectre._ It was his crew. His friends. His family.

Nova whipped out his holoterminal. He tapped away at it for a few moments calling up the command program he'd designed for this very moment. He ran the program, then transmitted it to the computers at traffic control. After a few moments of confused reactions from traffic control, he heard one technician say the magic words he'd been waiting for.

"Starship _Spectre_ , you have been cleared for landing in bay 13A."

"13A?" Kaz said. "That's on the other side of the docks!"

Nova's heart was in his throat. He turned and sprinted into the main corridor, rushing towards Bay 13A, where his friends would be waiting.

* * *

The crew's first journey aboard the _Spectre_ was uneventful, and the autopilot worked perfectly.

But where the autopilot had taken them, none of them could have expected.

"Cataraan?" Rei asked as the vast, ancient planet came into view.

Nara didn't respond.

"Well, I guess this is where they want us…" Rei speculated.

Then, a voice came over the speakers.

"Unidentified vessel, please submit your registry and transport qualification," it said.

Rei's eyes went wide.

"Transport documents! We don't have any transport documents!" she said.

Nara looked worried, but before she could say anything, the ship's monitors came alive, seemingly transmitting a series of documents. Various progress bars dominated the screens, then stopped. A few tense moments of silence passed, then the voice came back on the speakers.

"Very well, thank you, _Spectre._ You have been cleared for docking at Hangar Bay 13A. Please surrender control of your vessel to station control and prepare for landing."

"Uh…, Roger," Rei replied. She shot Nara a confused look, which she returned.

Rei reached over to the panel on her right, where large icon labeled "ACCEPT COMMAND REQUEST?" blinked softly. She tapped it, and the ship relinquished piloting control to the capable hands of the station's personnel, who remotely-navigated the ship slowly and carefully into one of the many large hangar bays that lined the side of the station. As the ship passed through the force field, she heard the soft whirring and clunking which indicated that the landing gear had been extended. The _Spectre_ 's repulsorlift engines spooled down gradually, and the ship gently touched down onto the floor of the hangar. Control of the vessel was returned to Rei, and she hit the main engine shutdown. The cabin lights came back up, and the soft hum of the ship's ventilation systems was the only sound that remained.

"Well," Rei said, "Let's go see if he's here."

She and Nara met up with the others near the door to the boarding ramp. Nara stood at the front, hesitating for a moment before entering the keycode that opened the door. It slid open with a hiss, revealing the boarding ramp, which slowly lowered down, emptying into a large, average-looking hangar bay.

As soon as they had all stepped off the ramp, the door to the main corridor slid open with a hiss. As soon as it did, a figure wearing a long, dark green coat sprinted in, then froze dead in his tracks when he saw them. He reached up to a pair of dark tinted glasses, and the color in them dropped to none. A pair of vibrant blue eyes stared back at them, and none of them were left to doubt.

"Nova...," Nara breathed, and broke into a dead run. A faint purple glow trailed out from the corners of her eyes. She ran over to him, and nearly tackled him from the force of the hug that she hit him with. She squeezed Nova until his lungs were on the brink of being crushed. Small tears of joy were streaming down her cheeks, and she felt an almost-physical sensation of three-plus years of grief melting off her. In a matter of moments, she felt back to her old self, a feeling which she hadn't felt in so long, she'd forgotten how good it felt. Nova rested a hand on her back, and his own head on her shoulder.

"I knew you were alive…" Nara said. Nova patter her back reassuringly, and held her for several moments. When she finally broke the hug, she stared up at Nova for a few seconds.

"You have no idea how good it is to see you again," Nova said. His own eyes were red and puffy, and it was clear that he, too, had been crying somewhat.

"Yeah," Nara replied, "I think I kinda do."

They hugged again, and the others walked over. Hugs were exchanged throughout the group, but it wasn't until several moments later that Nova remembered Kaz.

"Oh, no, Kaz!" he said. He reached up and reactivated the speakers on his glasses, and came up on Kaz mid-sentence.

"-ammit Nova you stupid son- FINALLY! 'Bout time you remembered me!"

"Sorry, Kaz..," Nova said. He took the glasses off and pulled out the pocket holoprojector and plugged it in. Moments later, Kaz appeared before the group.

"Good grief, _finally!_ I've been shouting for like, ten minutes now!"

"Hey Kaz," Rei said, a warm smile across her face.

"Hi Rei," he replied, a smile creeping across his own face. "It's a pleasure to see you all again."

Several moments of silence passed, which ended when Nova's face lit up with an idea.

"Oh, hey, guys, I've got something to show you all," he said, then motioned for them to follow them back aboard the _Spectre_.

* * *

They'd only been on the station for a few minutes, and already Nova was getting ready for them to leave. When she thought about it, she had actually missed Nova's usual assumptions that they were all on board with whatever he was doing. As a result, she sat on Rei's lap on the bridge of the _Spectre_ , while Nova keyed in the main engine start sequence. Winson and Lin were in the engine room, and D'razz and Rose were playing a card game on the holotable in the ship's foyer. As per usual, Kaz was plugged into the ship's main computer.

"You sure we shouldn't spend at least a little time on the station?" Nara asked. "Because I'm sure the others would like some time ashore."

"Well, I feel like once you guys see what we're heading towards, you'll agree that it was worth skipping the relaxation period."

Nara looked over at Rei, who simply shrugged in reply. She returned the gesture, and sit quietly while Nova fired up the repulsorlift engines and lifted the ship gently off the hangar bay floor, all on manual control. Nara had forgotten just how good a pilot he was. He keyed in a connection request to station control, which was accepted immediately.

"Station control, this is _Spectre_ , requesting permission for departure from hangar 13A, over," Nova said.

There was a few seconds in which the only reply was the faint hiss of the comm channel. Then, a high-pitched whine signaled someone tuning in to their connection, and an officer's voice came on over the speakers.

" _Spectre_ , this is station control, you are cleared for departure. Godspeed and have a safe journey. Control out."

"Thank you, control," Nova said, then carefully maneuvered the ship out through the hangar bay on repulsorlift power, then fired up the main engines once they were clear of it. He slowly flew the ship away from the station, until they had escaped the approach zone. Nova keyed in a series of coordinates into the navicomputer, then engaged the autopilot. The control devices all retracted back into their various panels, and moments later the hyperdrive spooled up. The stars turned to long white streaks, then vanished as the ship launched forth into the blowing blue tunnel of hyperspace.

Nara and Rei sat silently, staring out the forward viewports at the swirling blue tunnel they were hurtling through. Nova unbuckled himself from his chair, and stood up. he motioned for them to follow him, and they did. They emerged into the ship's foyer, where D'razz and Rose sat around the holotable. As soon as they saw then walk in, D'razz reached over and pressed a series of buttons on the holotable, after which the words "GAME SAVED" were displayed above the table's surface, and the game closed. Nova nodded his thanks to D'razz as he stepped up to the holotable's controls. Winson and Lin entered the room a moment later, and Nova pulled up a map of the galaxy on the holotable, widening the projection size so it filled the room.

"So," Nova said, an enormous grin across his face, "I bet you all are wondering where we're going right now."

Nova moved his hands around in the display, and the map shifted and moved according to his movements. Finally, he zoomed the picture in on the part of the galaxy with the Alderaan Belt, a massive asteroid field where the planet of the same name had once stood, many decades before. He pointed to one particular asteroid, seemingly the largest of them all.

"This," he said, pointing, "is Republic Charter NH-19982016, the largest asteroid in the Alderaan Belt." He tapped on the asteroid's icon a few times, and the view shifted so it was the center of attention. "To anyone else, it's just a big rock. But for us…," He tapped the asteroid, and the image shimmered, before revealing a huge network of manmade structures and fortifications built into the asteroid, such that little to no rock was left exposed on nearly three-fourths of the asteroid's huge surface.

"But for us," Nova continued, "It's Shipyard Omega, the top-secret research and development laboratory of Nubia Star Drives."


	5. Chapter Five: The Commission

**Chapter Five: The Commission**

The ship lurched as the hyperspace tunnel spit them out into a huge debris field. Massive chunks of rock floated around each other, even the smallest of them stretching kilometers in length. Nova expertly navigated the ship through the field, dodging and weaving between rocks with a practiced elegance. After several minutes of flying, the ship came up on a clearing-of-sorts, with one gigantic asteroid in the middle. But strangely, there didn't seem to be anything special about it. Sensors said it was the asteroid they were looking for, but nothing man-made or otherwise could be seen. But Nova didn't appear concerned. He slowed the ship down to a crawl, and picked up a small headset from the console next to him. He put it on, and positioned the mic to his mouth, then opened a short-range communication request.

"Shipyard Omega, this is private escort vessel _Spectre_ , requesting deactivation of the Illusion Shield. Transmitting transponder codes now."

He tapped the screen in front of him a few times, and a number of progress bars appeared and disappeared as a set of documents were sent. A few awkward moments of silence passed, then the comms crackled to life with the soft hiss of an open channel. A voice emanated from the speakers.

"Spectre _,_ this is Omega control, your documents have been processed and approved. Deactivation of the Illusion shield will commence shortly. Please proceed to hangar bay Theta-one-seven. A representative will meet you there. Control out."

Nova thanked them and closed the channel. He took off the headset, then turned to Nara and Rei, who had been sitting silently next to him.

"Well," he said, "We're here."

"Yeah, but where's 'here'?" Nara asked. "There's nothing here but a giant rock."

Then, as if in response, the asteroid before them seemed to shimmer, its surface seeming to twist and distort for a few seconds. Then, what turned out to have been an elaborate holographic projection faded, revealing a gargantuan network of man-made structures. Hangar bays, dry docks, work sites, multiple habitation rings, the smallest of which spanned at least a kilometer across. A single construction zone was carved into the side of the asteroid, and seemed to be the size of a small moon. It made the rest of the rock seem orders of magnitude larger than it had appeared before. Nara breathed in a slow gasp, and Rei did the same. Nova had a massively-excited grin on his face, and Nara couldn't decide if it made his face look cute or punchable. She mentally settled on punchable, but said nothing. Nova turned back to face the controls, and gently began flying the _Spectre_ towards the array of hangar bays. As they got closer, it became increasingly apparent just how gargantuan the rock was. All told, it was bigger than most moons, but more importantly, it was a space station. Easily the biggest one ever built. As Nova took the ship into one of the hundreds of hangars that lined the spaceport terminal zone, Nara did her best to take it all in. She was snapped out of her daze when the ship gently touched down on the floor of their hangar bay, and the sound of the engines whined down, then became silent. The crew once again met up at the door to the boarding ramp, and Nova reached over and keyed in his password. the door slid open with a hiss, and the ramp lowered into the hangar.

The architecture was incredibly elegant. The walls seemed to be multi-layered, with a backdrop of creamy off-white metal with pop-out accents that looked like genuine dark wood paneling. A light blue glow emanated from unseen light fixtures embedded in the walls, and ran along the sides of the rooms and corridors. The colors all mixed beautifully with the warm glow of the off-white LEDs in the ceilings.

As soon as they had all made their way off the ship, the door to the corridor slid open with a quiet hiss. And standing in the doorway was Kanson.

His silvery beard was shorter than Nara had remembered, but apart from that, he was instantly recognizable. He waved at them and made his way over. He laughed heartily as he approached.

"Well, well! If it isn't my favorite group of renegades! I take it you got my message, Ms. Mukure…."

Nara nodded. "Yeah, I did. Sending it as a subcarrier with background radiation was a genius idea," she said.

Kanson smiled warmly. "Well, it was necessary to maintain a level of the utmost security. But it is I who must thank you, for reactivating that locator beacon on the _Epsilon_. You'll be glad to know that she's safely back with your family."

The regret and sadness in Nara's eyes went by almost too fast to register, but Kanson placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Your family is safe, too, if it makes you feel any better," he said, his voice lowered.

Nara nodded once, and the familiar determination reappeared in her eyes. Kanson moved to Nova, and the two locked hands in a firm handshake.

"Captain Xaris," Kanson said, letting out a chuckle, "It's good to see you again."

"The feeling is mutual, Kanson." Nova said, his smile reaching his ears. "How's my commission coming?"

Rose shot Nova an inquisitive glance. D'razz looked at Nara. _Commission?_ He mouthed. Nara shrugged and shook her head. _Don't look at me, I've got no idea._ Kanson continued speaking.

"Ah, you'll be pleased to hear we're well ahead of schedule. Inner hull's all done, as is most of the interior, and we've almost finished laying down the outer hull. And let me tell you now, she's a real beauty."

Nova's smile was thin, attempting to be nonchalant, but it was clear from his eyes that he was bursting with excitement. It took a moment for him to reply.

"How's the power source coming?" He asked.

"Well, all the designs you sent us seem to check out," Kanson said. "We've made one or two modifications to enhance the rigidity of the containment field, but I figured you wouldn't mind that."

"Not at all," Nova replied. "But we're the output calculations accurate?"

"Well, as far as we can tell, yes. But of course, this whole deal is still in the hypothetical stages. We won't really know until we try it."

Nara had heard enough talk, and not enough answers. She interrupted before Nova had a chance to say anything.

"Okay, I'm sorry, but what the heck are you guys talking about?!"

Nova turned to look at her, then back to Kanson, then back to Nara.

"What, didn't I tell you?" He said, a confused look on his face.

"Tell me what?" Nara asked. "We're not all inside your head, Nova. Seriously, you do this all the time. You need to remember that we don't always automatically know what you're doing just because you do."

Nova blinked a few times.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well, umm…," Nova turned to look at Kanson. "Should we…? You know..."

Kanson looked confused, then his face lit up and he nodded. "Of course," he said, then turned to Nara. "If you'll follow me, we can show you."

* * *

Kanson led them down the futuristic-looking hallways of the station. They walked, and walked, and walked, navigating their way through multiple cities-worth of station, then stopped at a huge set of blast doors. Above them, a holographic display told them that beyond this door was the main construction sphere, and Kanson only needed to type in a special code on the panel next to the door for it to slowly slide open. Kanson led them through a few more hallways, into a lift, up several decks, then emerged into a massive control room.

The place was the side of a small tennis court. Consoles, displays, computer terminals, and desks lined the room, and the far wall appeared to be made out of long, horizontal metal slats. Numerous technicians and workers manned the desks and computers, but all stood simultaneously as soon as Kanson entered the room. They stood motionless, clearly awaiting instructions.

"At ease, folks," Kanson said, "I'm just giving a tour."

With that, the technicians returned to their work, and Kanson led the crew to the metal wall. As he began typing away at a console screen, Kanson began telling them a story.

"So, about six months after you all got separated, I got a call on a maximum-security tightbeam frequency," he said. "And I'll be damned if a hologram of Captain Nova Xaris himself is standing there, right in front of me, albeit with some different outfit and a haircut. But anyway, he tells me that he'd like to ask me a favor. He asked me to assemble my best, brightest, and most-trusted folks for one particular task. And at the end of the transmission, he attached a series of blueprints, right? So, I open them up, and before me sits this 3D model of what is quite possibly the most incredible ship I've ever seen. So, I call him back, telling him I accept the task. And after a few long-winded transactions, we get to work. And, after realizing just how secret this job would need to be, we built this station."

They all whipped around to look at him.

"Wait," D'razz said, "this whole station was built for just one purpose? Building one ship?"

"Yup," Kanson said, "but not just any ship. So, without further adu..."

Before them, the horizontal wall slats began to retract into the ceiling, revealing massive windows. And behind them, gleaming under the massive spotlights of the construction yard, a massive, silver ship sat, waiting. It was massive, with the main fuselage made of a long, oblong teardrop shape, with two huge, aerodynamic wing-like structures sticking out and angled slightly downward. Her hull was a glimmering silver, with flecks of crystal embedded in the bodywork. And there was no question of what it was.

"I give you… The _Stormbreaker II."_


	6. Chapter Six: Synergy

**Chapter Six: Synergy**

"I see you've kept a similar design theme," Lin said, after several moments of awe-inspired silence had passed. "But I can also see the improvements you've made to certain elements."

"Yeah," Nova said, "I went ahead and made the falcon extensions aerodynamic. Admittedly, this thing is far too huge to reasonably be taken into atmosphere, but I figure it'd improve the efficiency of the hyperdrive."

Lin nodded thoughtfully, continuing to study the ship from the windows. But then Rose tugged at her coat tail, and she looked down.

"Rose? What is it?" she asked.

Rose said nothing, but instead seemed to stare intently into Lin's eyes. A few moments later, Lin's face lit up, as if she had a response to a question.

"Oh, right, he did say that, didn't he?" Lin said, then turned to Nova.

"What was the power source Kanson mentioned?" She asked him.

Nova's face lit up, then took a very sheepish appearance. "Oh, yeah…," he said. "That may actually require some explaining. Hey, Kanson, have the engineering decks been vacuum-sealed yet?"

Kanson was walking around, monitoring the work of the technicians around the control room. He stopped when Nova asked the question. "That's a good question. One moment…," he said, then walked to a young woman's station near the window and leaned in to her screen.

"Report," Kanson said.

"Well," the woman began, "the inner hull has been fully laid-down across the ship, but we're still attaching pieces of the outer hull along the recreation decks. Luckily, the engineering sections and the bridge have been completed and fully sealed, sir."

"Good." Kanson looked at the two stripes on the woman's jacket. "Thank you, Lieutenant-"

"K'vara, sir." the woman said. She was a young, orange-skinned Dathomirian girl with stylish, close-cut silver hair and fairly minimal facial tattoos. D'razz swore he felt like he knew her from somewhere, but he couldn't place it. He made a mental note to keep an eye out for her in the near future.

"Thank you, Lieutenant K'vara," Kanson said, then walked back to the crew, a warm smile across his face. "Yup, she's sealed up. You all want a tour?"

Nova's face lit up with excitement. "Can we?" he asked, making little to no effort to hide his excitement.

"Sure," Kanson said, with a nonchalant shrug. "Follow me, and I'll take you to the docking port."

* * *

The ship's interior was gorgeous.

The walls were a mix of light- and dark-grays, with recessed lighting fixtures casting light blue glows along the seams in the ceiling of the corridors. The common living area was nearly twice the size of the old one. Tall, white-painted support columns with light-colored wood accents intersected the ceiling at a 45-degree angle, the empty space between them and the walls filled with glass panes which a unique insignia engraved in them, and were illuminated by hidden blue lights. The furnishings included a automated breakfast bar with three stools around it, a familiar-looking holotable in the center with two couches and four armchairs around it, as well as a multi-function gaming holotable capable of things like Holo Tennis, Holo-Hockey, Holo-Pool, etc., various pieces of exercise equipment, and a vast wraparound lounge couch in the far right corner with its own knee-high holotable. The crew stopped there only for a moment, however, before proceeding into the lift and down into the engineering levels.

The lift opened out into a vast, white chamber. The architecture was all too familiar: Tall, white columns with spiraling appendages connecting and intertwining them all. And at the center, a huge, familiar-looking cylindrical chamber sat, waiting. But through the transparisteel walls of the chamber, things weren't what any of them were expecting. Instead of the one small sphere in the center that they had expected, the chamber instead housed nine; eight spheres that were at least twice the size of the Nova Sphere, all circled around one giant central sphere, which was over twice as big as any one of the others. Each of the nine spheres seemed to be filled halfway with a strange, dark-gray fluid, which swirled and churned like foreboding storm clouds.

Lin stepped forward and got closer to the chamber. Her eyes were wide with awe.

"Nova….," she breathed. "What… what _is_ this?"

"I call it… The Synergy Drive."

"The what?" Nara asked, turning to look at him.

"Well, it's a long story."

"Do tell," D'razz insisted.

Nova's smile grew, and he walked forward, stopping and turning to face them once he reached the drive. "So, when I was designing this ship, I initially planned to power it by just reforging the Nova Sphere. I mean, it's a source of infinite energy, so no need to fix what ain't broke right?" He paused for a moment.

"Go on…" Rei said, drawing out the syllables.

"Well, I was going to just go with that, but then a little voice in my head said, 'Hey, shouldn't you run some calculations on that just to see how much of your force energy it'd take to power a ship this big?' So, I went ahead and ran the numbers. And as it turns out, the amount of force energy it would take to fuel the Nova Sphere for a ship this big is actually two orders of magnitude more force power than I actually possess! So, I had to come up with something else…"

"Whoa, wait a second..." Nara interrupted. Her face was twisted in thought.

The others turned to face her. Nova's face became a look in incredible anticipation and eagerness.

"Synergy." Nara said. "Synergy, as in friendship, harmony. The act of two or more parties working in full cooperation with one another."

Nova nodded, urging her to continue, his smile changing to become more proud in nature.

"So, there are eight small spheres, and there's…" She cut herself off mid-sentence. Her eyes went wide with sudden realization, and her jaw went slack.

"There… there's eight of us…," Nara said. "Those are for us. This thing is designed to hold a small piece of each of our life energies, and combine our power to fuel the whole ship."

The others turned to look back at Nova. His eyes were glowing faintly blue with emotion, and there was a thin streak where tears of joy ran down one side of his cheek.

"Yeah," he said. "It's not powered by me. It's powered by _us._ "

* * *

"So," Nova began, "We're all in agreement then?"

D'razz raised a hand tentatively.

"Well, I'm all for it, Nova, but there may just be one problem."

"Oh? What's that?" Nova asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Umm… I'm not force-sensitive."

"Yeah, and neither am I," Rei added. "So how do we give any force energy if we don't have any?"

Nova looked taken aback for a moment, then his expression resolved.

"Oh, well, you know you don't have to be force-sensitive to have force energy circulating through you…," Nova said. Rei raised an eyebrow inquisitively.

"The Force exists within any and every living thing in the galaxy. Every living being is surrounded by it, flows with it, and is affected by it. Everyone even has their own force signature, including those in the vast majority who don't have force powers. And as it happens, I have a way of harvesting it from you guys."

Nova turned and walked over to a cabinet against the side wall. He pulled out a few pairs of strange-looking gloves, which had all sorts of wires and cables coming out of them.

"Here," Nova said, passing a pair ro D'razz, Rei, and Lin. "Put these on," he said.

The three of them did as instructed.

"What are these?" D'razz asked.

"These are what I call 'Augmentation Gauntlets'. They're designed to give minimal force-power-like abilities to people who aren't naturally force-sensitive."

D'razz fell silent and inspected the gloves, clenching and unclenching his fingers and rotating his arms back and forth.

"Okay," D'razz said. He looked up at Nova. "I'm ready."

"Me too," Rei said.

Nova turned to look at Lin.

"Doc?"

Lin smiled and let out a soft chuckle.

"I've been with you from day one, Nova. And I always will be, no matter what."

Nova smiled, then turned and faced the chamber.

"Okay. Here's what you guys are gonna have to do…"

* * *

The _Stormbreaker II_ arrived at completion nearly two weeks after the crew had arrived at Shipyard Omega. The outer hull had been completed, all the systems had run full diagnostics while the ship was hooked up to the station's power, but she sat still in the construction dock, waiting for her own power source to awaken, so she could take flight among the stars.

For that purpose, the crew all gathered in the reactor room, making final decisions about how to proceed. Nova stood before the others, a layer of excitement visible in his eyes.

"Okay, guys, remember what we practiced?"

The others nodded separately, excitement and determination written across all of their faces.

"Awesome. Let's do this," Nova said, and turned to face the chamber. The others lined up alongside him, and they all took a similar stance: knees bent, bent forward, arms sticking out, shoulders relaxed. Nova closed his eyes and concentrated. He willed all his energy to go through his hands and flow into one of the spheres. As Rei, D'razz and Lin did the same, their Augmentation Gauntlets began to glow. Rei's glowed bright golden yellow, D'razz's a vibrant turquoise, and Lin's a fiery orange-red. As they each concentrated on a different sphere, the chamber started to react. The liquid in each sphere started by bubbling. Then it began to churn, swirling and spinning with greater and greater ferocity and speed, until each of the eight spheres began to emit brightly-colored glows. Lin, Rei, Winson, Kaz, D'razz, Nova, Nara, and Rose; Orange-red, golden-yellow, bright green, dark aqua, turquoise, bright blue, purple, and reddish-pink. Each of them giving a piece of themselves to the drive, and it was working. As the spheres began to glow brighter and brighter, the spheres began to spin, circling around the giant central one, gaining speed rapidly. A slow stream of energy from each of the eight spheres began flowing into the big central one, and the central one started to glow white with power. And then, with a bright flash, a shockwave erupted from the chamber and knocked all eight of them onto the floor, severing their connection to the spheres.

Once they all were back on their feet, the crew turned to look at the chamber.

The eight spheres were spinning around the central one that they resorted to look like a continuous, swirling rainbow. The large central sphere glowed white, with the edges of its aura changing colors rapidly. The drive sounded as powerful as it was, its hum being more like a mixture of thick fizzling, high-pitched warbling, and high-speed whirring.

For the first time, Rose spoke. Her voice was warm and silky, and was saturated with emotion.

"Wow," she breathed, "Synergy."


	7. Chapter Seven: Secrets & Sabotage

**Chapter Seven: Suspicion, Secrets, and Sabotage**

The _Stormbreaker II_ was ready. Her outer hull was complete, her systems were running under her own power. The hyperdrive was practically itching to take flight, and the crew was ready. Ready, as Sev'ra K'vana now knew, to be killed violently in a catastrophic hyperdrive malfunction.

She had been suspicious of Kanson ever since she'd arrived on Omega as its new chief engineer. Nobody had known what had happened to the person who she was supposed to be replacing, since they'd disappeared without a trace, conveniently soon after supposedly undercovering some highly-incriminating information. So Sev'ra had done some snooping of her own. And she'd learned that Kanson had been in the Empire's pocket all along. Kanson was regularly trading messages with the Imperial High Command, reporting the progress of the ship. And he'd been doing it since day one.

The station was initially built for one purpose: To build one ship, one massive ship, whose purpose was classified at the highest level. All the workers were suspicious -they'd be insane not to be- but they'd all held their tongues. Except for Sev'ra.

Technically, she wasn't there to investigate. She was there for a search-and-rescue operation, one which had been in planning for several years. She was here to redeem a long-lost friend. But she had time. It would be a while, she hoped, before her target left the station. And she had been spending any downtime she had double- and triple-checking the work being done to the mysterious _Stormbreaker_ _II_. And it was on the ship's last day in dock that she discovered a single piece of stray code embedded in the navicomputer programming. At first, she didn't think anything of it. But after inspecting the strand more closely, she discovered that it wasn't actually stray code at all. It was a piece of code that acted like a trap wire, which, upon activation of the hyperdrive, would cause a catastrophic failure of the reactor's containment field, resulting in an explosion which would scatter the component atoms of both the ship and its occupants across a hundred different star systems.

And that wasn't even the worst part. Whoever implanted the code was extremely clever, as should anyone try to tamper with or remove the strand of code, it would trigger the sequence anyway. But Sev'ra had a plan. A potentially-deadly one, but a plan nonetheless. And she had to stop the explosion, as the target for her original mission was set to depart aboard that ship. The ship was scheduled to set sail the following morning, and by the time it did, she would be ready.

* * *

Sev'ra floated in vacuum, a highly-advanced EVA suit cocooning her in a gentle, life-breathing embrace. She manipulated a small joystick with her right hand, which in turn caused little jets of superheated steam to fly out in various directions from the EVA pack strapped to her back, all of which moved her slowly towards the ship's starboard engineering airlock.

Getting the EVA pack had been the easy part. She'd fabricated an 'engine anomaly' of sorts in a simple rendering software and fed it into the diagnostic computers, then she'd simply used her clearance as chief engineer to check out an EVA suit, and told the duty logs she was going to inspect the anomaly. So now, she was working towards her real plan: to crawl between the inner and outer hulls of the ship, and perform a manual override on the hyperdrive.

She maneuvered her EVA pack over to the airlock, and keyed in her access code on the panel next to the door. It cycled open immediately.

As the airlock cycled through, she left her EVA suit on, stopping only for a moment to top off the air tanks from one of the airlock's many spare bottles.

The ship was empty. Nearly everyone on the station was on their sleep shift, and the ship's crew were in their respective cabins. But they were on the ship, so Sev'ra had to be cautious. She stepped out of the airlock and out into the corridor. With the lights off, the normally elegant and inviting interior was instead foreign and eerie. She chinned a small switch inside her helmet, and the section of room directly ahead of her became bathed in the four overlapping cones of white light her helmet produced. She made her way through the ship, following the signs that pointed towards the "C.L.A.", or Common Living Area. It struck Sev'ra as an awfully-long-winded name for a foyer, but she followed the signs nonetheless.

She rounded a corner and found herself in another stretch of corridor. At the end of it, a large amount of light was cast into the otherwise-dark hallway. All signs indicated that that was the room she was looking for. So she proceeded with caution.

As she reached the doorway, she activated the small camera mounted to her left wrist, calling up the image feed onto her helmet's HUD. She peeked the camera around the corner, and was surprised to find the room to be empty. Sev'ra shrugged to herself, a motion made completely invisible by the EVA suit, and rounded the corner and into the room.

The second she crossed the threshold, the doors slid shut behind her. Ahead of her, all the other doors in and out of the room followed suit, and the lights cut off, rendering the place in total darkness. Sev'ra's mind went into a frenzy.

 _It's a trap!_ she thought, and her mind went into overdrive. She developed a number of escape scenarios in seconds. But before she could carry out any of them, the holotable in the center of the room lit up, and a tall, dark-clothed figure appeared atop a green-lit holo-projection.

"Well, well, well. Who do we have here?" the figure said, smiling. "An intruder, perhaps? That sure is an impressive EVA suit you've got there. What's your plan? Evacuate the air? Blow all the airlocks and cast all my friends into the blackness of the void?"

Sev'ra's heart was in her throat. Her mind was in a panic, but then she had a sudden realization.

She wasn't here to hurt these people. She was here to save them. If she could just convince this hologram that she only meant well, she could avoid a world of trouble.

"Well?" the hologram said. "Any last words, before I go K'taaran warrior on your ass?"

"I...I…" Sev'ra stammered. "I'm… I'm… here to…"

"Here to what? TELL ME!" the hologram said, his voice booming with anger. The sound of it seemed to replace Sev'ra's fear with anger of her own.

"I'm here to save you stupid fucks from death by hyperdrive malfunction!" She cried.

The hologram stopped, and stared at her intently.

"Go on…," he said.

* * *

Sev'ra had removed her helmet, and was explaining the situation the the hologram man. Kaz, he'd said his name was. He had transferred himself to a series of multi-vector holoprojectors which popped out from the ceiling, and deployed and retracted as he moved about the room.

"So, this bit here," Sev'ra said, pointing to the line code, her finger movements causing it to be highlighter among the paragraph of other text displayed above the holotable's surface. "This is the part of it that we care about. But we can't just delete it. Because if you look here…," She continued to walk Kaz through both the lines of code and the reasons why her other ideas on how to save them would fail. Kaz pleasantly-surprised Sev'ra with his intelligent questions, as well as his apparent understanding of everything Sev'ra was saying. At the end of Sev'ra's presentation, Kaz spoke up.

"So, you need my help, right?" He asked.

"Might be useful," Sev'ra said with a shrug. "It'd be nice if I didn't die from trying to do this, and having a man on the inside would certainly help make that less likely."

Kaz chuckled.

"Well, then," he said, "I guess we'd better get started.

* * *

Nara awoke to the warm glow of the sunlight-mimicking LEDs in the ceiling. She sat up, stretched, and yawned. She heard a stirring next to her, and looked over to see Rei snoozing soundly under the covers. Nara leaned back down and planted a small kiss on the side of her cheek, and a smile creeped across her face. Her eyes flickered open, and Nara stared into them intently.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Rei replied, her smile growing slightly.

They stared at each other for another few moments before Rei spoke again.

"You look happy," she said, seeing the softness in Nara's cheeks and brow. Nara smiled again, and leaned in closer to her.

"I feel happy. More so than I've felt in a really long time."

"I'm glad," Rei said, then kissed her again. The two stared intently at each other for several more seconds, before the door chimed, ending the moment.

"Don't get up," Nara whispered, and got out of the bed. She walked to the door and pressed a button on the panel next to it, and the door slid open. Winson stood on the other side, a warm smile reaching his eyes. Next to him hovered a small cart, upon which a series of dishes and covered platters, as well as some drink glasses containing juice and milk.

"Room service?" He asked, trying and failing to conceal his excitement.

"Oh, you old dog, you," Nara said, laughing. "You shouldn't have..."

"Well, I felt like it was a special occasion," Winson said. "You know, it's a new day, start of a new chapter in our lives. Plus it's the first time in three years I've had access to real eggs…"

He lifted one of the plate covers and revealed a load of perfectly scrambled eggs, lightly salted and peppered, and cooked to perfection.

Nara laughed again. "Alright, you, come on in…" She said, and led him into the bedroom.

"Hey, Winson," Rei said, smiling warmly.

"Good morning, Ms. Rei," Winson said, his smile only widening. He pushed the cart into the center of the room, and set about unfolding various panels to reveal eating trays, and served Nara and Rei a breakfast consisting of real eggs, bacon, and even pancakes topped with actual syrup and real-life whipped cream. As soon as he saw they were taken care of, Winson excused himself from the room, leaving Nara and Rei to enjoy each other's company.

Partway through a bite of pancake, Nara's face lit up with an idea.

"Ooh, you know what?" she said, "there's something I'd like to try…." She swallowed her bite and reached over to the bedside and tapped on a small panel, which lit up in response to her touch. She tapped a button labeled "Adaptive Scenery" and then on an icon which resembled a small microphone. Rei watched her work with a quite amusement, and silently wondered what Nara had thought of.

A quick, two-tone burst sounded, and Nara spoke out loud.

"Set Adaptive Scenery. Location, Royal Lakefront, Theed Palace, Naboo. Time, early sunset. Conditions, clear, sunny, 71 degrees Fahrenheit, wind speed 2 mph."

And with that, the room all but disappeared.

The walls, the floor, and the ceiling all lit up with a brief white flash, then changed as an elaborate projection was emitted from every surface in the room, including all the furniture. Suddenly, whereas they had been in their quarters on the ship, they now sat on a beach, overlooking a massive lake. The sun was right in front of them, sinking slowly into the water, casting a golden glow across its otherwise deep-blue surface. Trees surrounded them on either side, and they sat on what actually felt like genuine sand. The temperature had become exactly what Nara had commanded it to, and Rei could actually feel the sensation of warm sunlight on her face and even a cool breeze coming off the water, complete with appropriate levels of mist. The immersion was so intense that it made Rei's brain hurt momentarily. But one thing was certain: it was beautiful. She leaned to the side, resting her head against Nara's shoulder, and allowed her eyes to close as the cool breeze blew her hair back gently.

"I love you," Rei whispered.

"I love you, too," Nara replied, her voice equally quiet.

* * *

Sev'ra wasn't feeling the love, to say the least.

Currently, she was back in her EVA suit, crawling in the narrow space between the ship's inner and outer hull. She was moving slowly amidst the mass of wires, cables, tubes, etc. that went to and from every major section of the ship. She was almost at the hyperdrive unit, and Kaz was in her ear, walking her through each and every step.

The plan was fairly simple, on paper: Sev'ra would crawl through and literally cut the main link cable which connected the navicomputer to the hyperdrive, and in its place she would wire in a small, jury-rigged device she and Kaz had built which would serve the same purpose, albeit less-explodey.

But the hyperdrive wasn't exactly designed to be accessed from the crawl spaces. But it was the only way she could do what she had to and ensure that Kaz could still conceal her presence aboard the ship, since he wasn't able to control the ship's internal sensors as far as the pressurized cabins and rooms were concerned. So instead she was stuck here, feeling more and more claustrophobic every second. She kept telling herself that it was all just in her head, and the thought was somewhat reassuring. What wasn't reassuring, however, was her time limit.

She only had one hour left, after which the ship would be a few clumps of dust here and there in a hundred different star systems.

But finally, she arrived at her destination. Kaz had already started telling her where to point her welding torch first, as well as where to never, ever, under any circumstances point that torch towards.

 _Time to get to work_ , she thought to herself.

* * *

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, this is is your captain speaking," Nova said as he happily began strapping into the _Stormbreaker II_ 's pilot seat. "If you would, please return all chairs and tray tables into the fully upright position, and then sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride."

The display in front of him was a mixture of holographic projections and high-definition LED displays, all of which conveyed information from all across the ship right to him in a neat, well-organized layout which was tailored for his personal use. He'd already had clearance from the tower, and the crew was set to depart.

With a huge smile on his face, Nova gently applied pressure to the array of eight thin, spindly throttle levers, each of which controlled one of the ship's eight massive sublight engines. He urged all eight of the forward with one hand, and the ship slowly began drifting forth out of the construction sphere and into the vast blackness of space.

Nova stifled a laugh as the ship finally cleared the threshold of the bay, Nova cut power to the sublight engines, and reached to a large single lever closer to him, and began to push forward on it. He heard the satisfactory sounds of the hyperdrive spooling up, and waited patiently for the ship to be enveloped in the long, swirling blue tunnel of hyperspace.

Instead, what he got was a sudden kick in the face, courtesy of the dashboard in front of him. With a mighty force, the ship lurched multiple times, causing Nova's face to repeatedly make an arrangement with the console, then shunted him back into his seat as the sublight engines reactivated and went to maximum thrust, all in a quarter of a second. Something in the back of Nova's mind told his that he'd just accidentally reduced a massive portion of the station into molten rock, but the feeling of an oncoming concussion pushed the thought out of his mind. After a few minutes, when he was finally sure he wasn't going to pass out, he pressed the button for the intercom.

"Okay," he said, dizziness creeping into his voice, "what the hell was _that?!_ "


	8. Chapter Eight: Haunting Memories

**Chapter Eight: Haunting Memories**

Nara paced furiously across the room. The rest of the crew stood around her, with Sev'ra sitting on the couch directly in front of her. Thoughts like _who the hell are you_ and _what were you doing on my ship_ and _were you seriously thinking of harming my friends bitch you better not have been thinking about harming my friends because I swear to god if you'd touched a hair on Rei's head I would have gone full-Jedi Knight on your ass_ circulated through her mind, but none of them made their way out into the open. She stopped suddenly and turned to look straight at Sev'ra, her eyes blazing with a raw fury.

Nara turned and continued pacing, before Winson suddenly reached out and grabbed her shoulder. She turned to look at him, eyes wide for a moment, but then as their eyes met, she felt all the rage and fire in her blood flush out of her system in an instant, leaving an intensely-focused calm in its place. She nodded her thanks to him, then turned towards Sev'ra again.

"Okay…," She began, "Just… start talking."

Sev'ra straightened up, and began to speak. Her voice was surprisingly low, and radiated a sense of relaxed focus.

"My name's Sev'ra K'vana. I'm a marine, a lieutenant in the Dathomirian Militarized Resistance Forces, and I was sent here to pick up him." She gestured towards D'razz with her head as she said it. "His presence has been requested by the Admiral herself, and I'm not the type to question an order."

They all looked stunned. "Me?" D'razz asked. "Why do you need me?"

"Good question," Sev'ra replied, "one you can take up with my superior officers. And seriously, I need to take him with me. I don't know for how long, but I can say this," She turned to look directly at D'razz. "Your sister was a hero to my group. Her martyrdom is the reason we got organized in the first place. And we need you to help us. Wouldn't you like a chance to redeem her?"

D'razz suddenly looked like a ghost, as if the life had drained from his eyes and his entire spirit had been shattered. His eyes welled up, and he got up and sprinted out of the room, his head in his hands. The door had closed behind him before anyone had a chance to react.

"Okay," Nova said, turning back to Sev'ra, "Now you _really_ need to explain yourself."

* * *

D'razz was cowering atop the covers of his bed, shuddering in fear at the flurry of highly-traumatic memories that were flooding his mind all at once. He hadn't thought of his family in so long, mostly because the memories were so painful that he could bear to allow himself to reflect on them. To think that just when D'razz had finally managed to move on from the never-ending tragedy that was his family, the universe had delivered a cold hard slap to the face.

 _Oh, Co'ronn_ , he thought, memories of his late older sister flooding his mind. _Oh, Co'ronn, I'm so sorry…_

His mind was so overwhelmed that it took several moments before D'razz noticed that he was weeping, and his pillow was stained in places where large amounts of tears had been soaked up by its cloth surface. His thoughts were running wild, and they were threatening to take control of him. And at this point, he wasn't sure he had the willpower to stop them from doing just that.

He was snapped out of his stupor when the door chimed. D'razz sat up and dangled his legs over the side of the bed, facing away from the door. He reached up and tried to rub away the tears in his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. The tears didn't stop coming, and he didn't try to stop them. But he mustered all his energy to make his voice stable enough to form two words.

"Come in," he said, his voice cracking despite the effort. The door slid open, and the shadow of a tall figure was cast into the room amongst the heavily-dimmed lighting. D'razz heard footsteps, and then felt the bed shift and move as someone sat down next to him. D'razz looked over enough to see the person's legs, and saw a belt with a shiny chrome-plated lightsaber. It was Nova.

D'razz looked back down at his feet, saying nothing. Nova took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He didn't say anything either, but instead continued to breathe in the same rhythm, and D'razz found himself naturally deferring to the same. And as he did, he felt his mind beginning to slow down, the hurricane of thoughts beginning to dissipate. After a few moments, Nova finally spoke.

"They're all flooding back to you, right?" he asked.

"Huh?" D'razz asked, and looking up at him. Nova's face almost perfectly mirrored what D'razz felt like his looked like.

"Memories, D'razz. Dark ones. Ones you haven't thought about in years, and they're suddenly back with such force that you feel like your entire soul is being consumed by them. Ring a bell?"

D'razz lowered his head again, and didn't say anything. He didn't need to. Nova let out a heavy sigh.

"Do you remember… on the _Stormbreaker I_ , that time when I found a holocron made by my brother at that Imperial base? And how it attempted to corrupt my entire soul?"

"And we had to go _into your mind_ to stop it? Yeah, I do," D'razz said, a smile appearing briefly across his face. "Why do you ask?"

"Because," Nova continued, "What I was going through then was almost exactly what you're going through right now. I can see it, D'razz. Not just in your eyes. Its in your Aura."

"My… my Aura?" D'razz asked tentatively.

"Every living being has one, even though few can actually see them. There are a select few Jedi that are able to actually see a person's aura. And everyone's aura is a different color. Even if the differences are incredibly minor, a powerful mind can be trained to spot them. You can tell a lot about a person by the state of their aura. If its color is vibrant, and radiates outward from them in waves, it means they're happy. If their aura is dark-tinted, and curls and tumbles around them, it means they're angry. And if their aura is gray-scaled, faint, and almost colorless, and curls back inward towards its host, it's a sign of intense inner turmoil. And D'razz?"

D'razz looked up at Nova. His eyes had welled up again, and tears were once again streaming down his face.

"D'razz, yours is more gray right now than I think I've ever encountered before. So I need you to do something for me."

D'razz swallowed hard and blinked several times, then nodded silently for Nova to continue.

"Tell me," Nova said. "Tell me everything."

* * *

D'razz had told his story. And Nova had listened.

They still sat on D'razz's bed, but the mood had changed. It had gone from a solemn, dark mood to a warmer, trusting feel. D'razz felt a sense of a strengthened bond with Nova, and Nova felt mutually. After D'razz had finished talking, Nova waited several moments before speaking.

"D'razz, if there is nothing else, there is at least one thing I can say."

D'razz looked up at him.

"It's not your fault," Nova continued, "And I know that sounds cliché as hell, but _believe me_ , as somebody who witnessed the death of a family member where it _was_ their fault, I should know. You at least have safety in the knowledge that she didn't die by your hand."

D'razz nodded silently, the look in his eyes seeming to say he understood. Nova patted him firmly on the back, then stood up. He walked to the door, hesitating a moment. He looked back to D'razz, a thin, determined smile appearing on his face. D'razz returned the look, and Nova stepped out of the room. The door slid shut behind him with a faint hiss.

D'razz stood up. He walked slowly into the bathroom, stopping at the large sink. He turned on the tap, and cupped his hands under the stream. He leaned over, splashing his face a few times, then turned off the faucet and reached up for a towel. After he'd dried his face off, D'razz looked up and stared into the mirror. His reflection stared back at his. His small, crescent-spiked tattoos under his eyes were still there, and his eyes were vibrant with the scientifically-enhanced turquoise that had been a result of the facial reconstruction his mask had performed. His thoughts were calmer; clearly his talk with Nova had at least done some good. D'razz thought about Sev'ra, and her proposal for D'razz to avenge his dead sister. He wasn't sure why, but something within him really liked the sound of that. He thought, perhaps, that going with Sev'ra would be a way to put Co'ronn's spirit to rest, and allow her memory to stop haunting him. It might be worth a try.

D'razz exited the bathroom and made his way to the door to the hallway. He stopped at the doorway, hesitating before tapping the panel to open the door.

When he'd reached the CLA, D'razz had made up his mind. He approached the large door, which slid open upon sensing him.

"D'razz!" Rei exclaimed when he entered. "You okay?"

"Yeah, fine," he said, brushing away the question. He turned and looked directly at Sev'ra, a fiery determination in his eyes.

"What you said, about avenging my sister?" he began, and Sev'ra nodded slowly. "I accept your offer. It would be an honor to join you, and to finally put my sister's spirit to rest."

* * *

D'razz and Sev'ra would be traveling alone. The others had desperately insisted that D'razz not separate himself, especially so soon after reuniting, but he'd simply stated his intense desire for nothing to happen to any of them, and had left it at that. D'razz had packed a single small, brown duffel bag bringing his old, dusty-brown jacket, leaving his newer orange-and-black one on the ship. He also left his crew t-shirts, instead bringing along a few simple white ones. He even left his crossbow, taking only a spare utility belt. As he looked in his bedroom mirror for what he was sure was the last time for a while, he took an extra moment to acknowledge how much older he looked, his 20-year-old self looking so much more confident than the sacred 17-year-old that had once worn these same clothes, over three years before. It felt like a lifetime ago, and yet here he was, preparing to face it all again and then some. He nodded once to his reflection, then slung the duffel over his shoulder and left the room. Sev'ra was waiting outside, leaning casually against the wall of the corridor.

"You sure you're ready for this?" She asked, her voice strangely metallic, yet kind.

"I'm ready," D'razz assured her.

"Well, your friends have prepared a ship for us. Let's get a move on, then, shall we?" Sev'ra said.

D'razz gestured for her to take the lead, and followed her into a lift. But the lift took them to a deck D'razz had never been to before. And it comprised of a single room:

A _gargantuan_ hangar bay.

It looked like something you'd find on a military capital ship. It could easily fit twenty freighters, hundreds of starfighters, or any other combination of ships you'd ever want to carry. Parked off to the side sat the _Spectre_ , various cables, tubes, and other equipment hooked up to it while it wasn't in use. And near where the elevator had deposited them, D'razz saw the others gathered around a small, dingy-looking freighter, which was brown with the faded remains of orange accents that had once adorned its hull. It looked old, cheap, and perfect. It was exactly what D'razz was hoping for. Something that would have no detectable ties to the _Stormbreaker_ or her crew, and would look at home amongst the other future junkyard inhabitants that Dathomir so commonly saw to the needs of.

When he reached the others, Sev'ra went ahead of him and boarded the ship so she could make final preparations while D'razz said his goodbyes.

Only thing was, D'razz didn't feel like it was goodbye. Something from deep within told him that he would see these people again, and it wouldn't be too long. He hoped that was true.

Rei was the first to approach him. Her hair had grown a lot since they'd reunited with Nova, but it still only fell just past her shoulders. D'razz suspected that by the time he got back, it would have regrown to its former length, just past the base of her spine. She spoke first, her voice tender.

"You sure about this? Alone, I mean?" She said. Her eyes had a look of sad pride to them, as if she was a caring mother letting her child out into the galaxy for the first time.

"Yeah, I'm sure," D'razz said. Rei smiled and pressed her hand against her cheek, briefly running her hand along his tattoo. Then she hugged him, and D'razz returned the gesture

"Just be careful, okay? This isn't goodbye," she said, her tone of voice making it a fact.

"Of course not," D'razz said, and Rei let go of him. In her place, Nara stepped up.

Before she said anything, She pulled D'razz in and hugged him for a moment, then held his shoulders out at arm's length.

"I know you have to do this," she said, a prideful smile on her face. "I know you do. Just be careful, okay? It'd really suck to have you go dying on us." She chuckled, and D'razz joined in.

Nara looked him in the eye, her eyes gleaming with a strong pride. Something about the way she looked at him filled D'razz with determination, and he nodded once to her. She stepped back to join Rei and the others.

"Good luck, D'razz. We're all rooting for you," Winson said, a cheerful smile across his face. Rose shot him a nod. _Go get 'em_ , her face seemed to say. D'razz nodded back.

Finally, Nova approached him. He looked D'razz in the eyes, a faint glow emanating from his piercing blue irises. He stuck his hand out, and D'razz shook it firmly. Then Nova pulled D'razz into a shoulder hug, and D'razz returned it. When they broke, Nova studied him intensely for a few moments, then finally spoke up.

"You've grown so much since we first met, you know? For goodness sake, D'razz, you're so much more now than that scared little 17-year-old I nursed back to health all those years ago. Just…" His eyes welled up, and he had to dry them with his sleeve.

"Just, don't do anymore growing up without us, okay?" Nova said, his voice cracking slightly. D'razz felt a powerful sensation flow through him as he had the realization that no matter what he faced, it would no longer be his family. That role now fell to these people. They were his family now, and there was nothing D'razz would rather have them be. He turned and stepped onto the boarding ramp to the ship, turning once to look back at the group, then disappearing into the depths of the small freighter.

The group watched as the freighter's repulsorlift engines fired, and the ship rose gently into the air. The landing legs and boarding ramp retracted, and the main drive ignited. Before them, the massive curved walls of the hangar bay began to slide open, opening up into the massive void of space. The ship's main drive ignited, and it flew through the gap in the doors, onward into the vastness of space. The crew watched as the ship shrunk to a small dot, then it lit up with a brief flash of light, and was gone.


	9. Chapter Nine: Aboard Two Starships

**Chapter Nine: Aboard Two Starships**

 **Author's Note:**

Hey, guys! DoctorPortal here. I just wanted to apologize for my lack of uploads lately! It's been difficult writing lately, for a couple of reasons. I've been forcing myself to make every chapter I upload for this book a minimum of 2,000 words apiece, and I've also been working to slow down the action a little in each chapter, and put in some more detail! All that means that updates will take a little longer between each new one, and for that, I apologize! But, hey, I just want to give you, my beloved readers, the best that I have to offer you. And with that, I hope you enjoy Chapter Nine!

 **~DoctorPortal**

* * *

D'razz's mind was surprisingly calm as the small freighter hurtled through the hyperspace tunnel. As he paced the small ship's corridors, looking for the cockpit, he began to run through his plan for when he got to Dathomir. He'd already run it a million times, but he'd continue to run it until it was all he could think about.

He finally found the cockpit, and squeezed himself through the door. Sev'ra sat at the helm, a book that D'razz recognized in her hand.

"I've read that one," he said, as he plopped into the copilot's chair. Sev'ra looked up, and smiled as she looked back down at it. She twisted the book in her hand, allowing D'razz to see it better. D'razz felt puzzled at Sev'ra's demeanor, which had seemed to have changed drastically since they'd left the ship.

"Have you? It's a good one," she said.

"Yeah," D'razz replied, not sure what to say. Sev'ra relieved his tension by speaking.

"I'm sorry about the way I acted, by the way. Aboard your ship? I'm not usually like that."

"Oh?" D'razz said, looking up at her.

Sev'ra blushed slightly for a moment, scratched at the back of her neck, then continued.

"Yeah," she said, "I just don't do well around new people. I'm in a resistance. When you spend every waking moment of your life with the same group of people, you don't really get a lot of newcomers. So, when I suddenly find myself in a room full of eight people I've never met before, I get kind of on-edge."

"And that's when the military training kicks in," D'razz guessed.

"Exactly." Sev'ra said. "So, again, sorry for coming across as a stuck-up bitch."

D'razz chuckled. "No worries," he said. "You seem like a good person. And that's all I care about."

They fell silent for a while, but it didn't feel quite so tense anymore. After having stared at the swirling tunnel of blue light outside the cockpit for so long he thought he'd go blind, D'razz decided to ask the question he'd been wondering the entire time.

"So…," he said, "how… How did you know Co'ronn?"

Sev'ra sighed, and set her book down.

"I didn't know her that well, personally. My older sister did, and I only saw her in passing. It was a long time ago, though. I mostly knew her for the martyr she became when she was killed."

A moment of silence passed before Sev'ra went on.

"I know she meant a lot to you, D'razz. That's why we need you."

"But _why?_ " D'razz insisted. "You still haven't told me why you need me specifically."

Sev'ra paused for several moments, choosing her next words carefully.

"Well, D'razz, it's because of the woman the resistance is trying to track down."

"Who?" D'razz asked, even though a feeling in the pit of his stomach told him he already knew the answer.

"Your mother, D'razz," Sev'ra said. "Nui'ya Stegma just took over as leader of the Nightsisters, and we have nobody left to turn to."

* * *

Rei was coming to terms with the fact that the _Stormbreaker II_ was huge. Whereas her predecessor had been built with rooms on each deck falling more or less in a straight line, the new ship's layout was large, complex, and three-dimensional. She paced casually through the halls of the ship, taking her time so as to absorb as much as possible of the ship's interior layout. She began taking mental notes of where certain rooms lie in relation to others, and slowly her mind began weaving the web of rooms and corridors together into a cohesive internal map of the ship, all stored within the recesses of her mind.

She rounded a corner and found herself back on the central corridor, which sat in the ship's dead center and stretched along a good one-third of the ship's length. The corridor also acted like an atrium, as the ceiling stretched to the deck above, with wraparound pathways lining it on the upper floor. From this one central corridor, Rei could access almost any of the major sections of the ship. On the level above were all the crew cabins, wrapped around the open atrium space on the deck above. On the lower level around her, The CLA, the medical bay, the lift to the engineering lab, the lift to the bridge, and the training arena could all be accessed simply by crossing the room.

She heard sounds coming from the training arena, so she strolled casually in that direction. Upon rounding the corner, she saw that the wide steel doors had been left open. Nova and Nara were inside, both wearing their Stormbreaker tees and athletic shorts. Their jackets hung on a rack beside the door. The two of them stood, facing each other, in the center of the arena, lightsabers drawn. Both were drenched in sweat, and were breathing heavily. Not wanting to disturb them, Rei hung back in the short tunnel between the door and the main chamber.

Suddenly, Nova leaped forth with blinding speed, but Nara was faster. She dodged to the right of Nova's blade and slashed at his side with what would have been a devastating counterattack, had Nova not then jump-strafed to evade it. Then they stood facing each other again, stances ready, blades in front of their centers, breathing heavily, just as they had been when Rei had walked in. Then again, with a speed that made Rei's brain hurt, Nara launched herself forward, and brought her saber up and across, delivering a slash to Nova's chest which, had the saber not been in training mode, would have sliced him in half like a knife through warm butter. Instead, it simply left a massive tear in his shirt and a large but minor cut across his torso. Nevertheless, the attack caught him off guard and he stumbled back, then attempted to land a counterattack to Nara's left arm. But by the time he did, Nara had leaped high into the air, performed a long backflip, and latched herself onto the wall, her right hand and both legs clinging to the wall with no visible support. When Rei squinted, she could see that Nara's hand and feet each had faint purple auras around them, which swirled around like tiny, turbulent energy clouds. It occurred to Rei that she was using her force powers to hold herself planted firmly against the wall, well over 45 feet above the floor, and she made it look breathtakingly easy.

 _Damn,_ Rei thought, _she's getting good._

Then, in a movement so fast Rei would have missed it if she'd blinked, Nara launched off the wall, rising in a parabolic arc which nearly reached the ceiling, then she spun around at high speed for a moment then froze her spin mid-air, thus whipping her lightsaber blade around in front of her. The motion sent three large, crescent-shaped ripples of energy rocketing towards Nova, who had to roll several times to the side to avoid the impacts. It was an attack Rei had never imagined possible. As the floor came up to meet Nara, she curled into a ball and rolled into the impact, all but nullifying the force of it. Nova lunged at her, bringing his blade up and to the side, attempting to land slash at Nara's face. Nara twisted to her left, dodging the attack so closely that a small strand of her hair was sliced off by Nova's blade. Then, as he flew past her, Nara struck a devastating blow to Nova's back with her elbow, which knocked him flat on the ground. By the time he rolled over onto his back, Nara was staring him down, Her lightsaber pointed straight at his nose. They stood that way for several tense seconds, before Nara's face twisted into a massive grin, and she pressed a switch on her lightsaber, causing the glowing purple blade to be sucked back into the hilt with a distinctive sound.

"Looks like I win again, Storm-Boy," Nara said, a rueful smile across her face. Nova winced at the nickname, but his smile said he didn't take offense. Nara reached her left arm down to help him, and Nova locked his arm around it. Nara helped pull him to his feet, and Nova finally spoke.

"I would have had you, had it not been for that slash to the chest," he said, smiling. "I'm really impressed, Nara. I really am. You're learning faster than I can teach you, and from the looks of things, you're on your way to becoming a far greater Jedi than myself. And I'm not joking when I say that."

The red in Nara's face deepened slightly at the compliment, but before she could say anything in reply, Rei emerged into the room, whooping and clapping rapidly, a huge grin across her face.

"Whoo! That was awesome! Seriously, guys, that was _so_ cool!"

They both looked over to her, and Nova blushed slightly, and he began rubbing the back of his neck. Nara's face lit up when she saw her, and she began walking towards a table to the side of the room, beckoning with her head for Rei to join her. Rei jogged to meet up with her, and she got there just as Nara picked up two highly-absorbent towels that sat atop the table. Nara flung one of them over towards Nova, using her force powers to push it further to him with an almost instinctive motion. He force-pulled it the rest of the way to him without even looking up. Nara picked up the other one and began dabbing her face with it, while Nova proceeded to vigorously rub his hair with the towel, before draping it across his shoulders. He flicked Rei and Nara an upwards nod, then walked to the locker near the door, retrieved his jacket and cloak, and left the arena. The large steel doors slid closed behind him.

Having watched him leave, Rei turned back to face Nara, who was taking a long drink from a large water bottle. She gulped down the last few drops, then sighed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She set it down and took a few seconds to catch her breath. After a few moments passed, Rei spoke up again.

"So, how did the rest of practice go, besides what I saw?" She asked.

Nara sighed, finally managing to catch her breath.

"It went really well," Nara replied, "We did a lot of work on my aerial combat, then did some force-manipulation exercises, and a few other things, and then wrapped up with our usual daily-recap duel, which is what you saw."

Rei nodded a few times, then followed Nara over to the lockers. She stood patiently while Nara retrieved her jacket and other loose items from one of them, then spoke again once she was finished.

"So, I've noticed you've been becoming more and more natural with your force powers," Rei said conversationally.

"Yeah, I guess I have," Nara replied, leading them out of the arena. "Honestly, it's gotten to the point where I just use them as easily and reflexively as I do my own hands. And it's at its best when I'm training with Nova, because, well… I don't know. Maybe something about being with another powerful Jedi has some effect."

"Cool," Rei replied, then added, "And what about your sessions with Winson?"

"Oh, now _those_ are interesting," Nara said, a wicked grin spreading across her lips. "But they're also so different. Lately, Winson's been teaching me his methods on Jedi Mind Trick, and how he's able to implant suggestions in even the strongest of minds."

Rei whistled low. "So, good stuff, then, huh?"

"Yup," Nara replied. "But honestly, you really can't make a comparison between Nova's training and Winson's training. They're both so wildly different that I sometimes forget that they're even related at all."

"Huh," Rei added, having run out of things to say. The two of them continued to walk in companionable silence until they were back at their quarters, and Nara stopped at the door.

"So, uh, I'm gonna go shower, so…," she began.

"Oh, no, it's fine," Rei said, blushing. "I'll just… go continue my tour of the ship."

Nara smiled. "Cool. Meet me in the CLA when you're done?"

"It's a date," Rei replied, a sly grin across her face.

Nara then turned and went into their room, and the door slid shut behind her. Rei turned and walked down to the end of the hallway, then pressed the button for the lift.


	10. Chapter Ten: Of an Age Gone By

**Chapter Ten: Of An Age Gone By**

 **Author's Note:** Hey, guys. DoctorPortal here again, with another chapter for you! This time didn't take _nearly_ as long to brainstorm. I think I'm getting back into the rhythm of things again! So, in case any of you hadn't noticed or figured out already, I've officially arrived at D'razz's character arc! Also, there's a whole lot of referencing to the Part I of D'razz's backstory, which is posted as the first chapter of _Stormbreaker: Origins_ , which is a separate book listed on my profile page. Go check that out if you haven't already! Because there are references to multiple characters in this chapter that aren't introduced anywhere else, and I don't intend to introduce properly in this book. So, seriously, go check out the other one! Oh, and it's not actually written by me, but rather by the guy who came up with the character of D'razz himself, my friend Ethan. You can also check him out on YouTube as "Drillspha", so go check him out! So, anyway, that's all for now. I hope you all enjoy Chapter Ten of Stormbreaker!

* * *

They landed on Dathomir without incident, covered by the veil of darkness of night. The ship had accomplished its goal of not causing suspicion upon entering the planet, but they didn't bother to land at one of the spaceports. D'razz had requested that they divert to another location, one which he'd never expect returning to.

As the ship entered the upper atmosphere, it began to shake and rattle as the effects of aerodynamics began to take hold. Flames licked at the space around the cockpit, held back by the ship's basic deflector shields. The rattling subsided to a shudder, and then vanished altogether. The clouds came up to meet the ship, then parted rapidly as the craft burst through them.

Below the cloud layer, a vast sea of dead, desolate dirt and sand came up to meet them. And as the ship approached the ground, what had started as a small, brown dot against the sandy backdrop soon grew in size, resolving into the shape of a small outcropping of buildings, one which D'razz thought he'd never return to.

Sev'ra pulled back on the controls and gently set the ship down, right next to the burned-out remains of D'razz's old farmhouse.

The house's structure had remained remarkably intact. D'razz could see that the south end of the house, which had contained Co'ronn's room and his grandmother's room, had collapsed. However, the kitchen, living room, the east side of the house, which had housed D'razz's room and Nui'ya's room, were still standing. The irony of it was not lost on D'razz, and he slowly walked up the steps to the front porch, hearing a familiar creak with each step. The house had been designed to withstand sandstorms which would have long since destroyed any lesser architecture, but even so D'razz was still surprised by just how much of the old farmhouse was still standing. He approached the door, and pressed his hand against it. A thin layer of grime came off on his fingers as the door swung slowly inward, a long, stretched-out creak accompanying its motion. Sev'ra followed silently as he stepped inside. D'razz pulled a small flashlight out of his back pocket, and flicked it on. Sev'ra pulled out her pistol and activated the flashlight attachment it was fitted with. Their beams illuminated the otherwise pitch-black house.

The house was arranged in a single-story, backwards-L-shape frame, with the main living room in the front, D'razz's room to the right, and Co'ronn's adjoining it, then his grandmother's room sticking backward and to the right, with Nui'ya's room at the far end.

Co'ronn's room had collapsed. So had Grandmother's, and the passage to Nui'ya's room was completely obstructed. But apart from that, and the thick layer of ash and dust that covered everything, the house was exactly how D'razz remembered it. D'razz maneuvered his way across the foyer floor like he always had, as if in a dream. He moved across the space and soon rounded the corner, coming face-to-face with the door to his old room. He grntly turned the knob, and pushed it open.

Inside, it was almost perfectly preserved.

A thin layer of dust coated every surface. But the walls were still the same, pale-turquoise painted wood, the same exotic landspeeder posters dotted the walls, the same knick-knacks lined his old desk, the same ancient computer terminal sat collecting dust. The same small bed sat against the same large window, looking out towards the desolate land the house occupied.

His bed was still made. D'razz could practically see his grandmother tenderly straightening up the sheets, dusting off the covers, and fluffing the pillows, in anticipation of when he came home that night.

Except that he never had.

D'razz's eyes welled up, and he swallowed hard to keep them at bay. He couldn't fool Sev'ra, though.

"It's powerful, huh?" She asked.

D'razz turned to face her, unable to mask his expression. It told the whole story.

"I'm sorry, D'razz." Sevra said.

D'razz turned and sat down on the bed, kicking up a cloud of dust, which sent him into a fit of coughing, and made his eyes water even more. The coughing evolved into a deep, heavy sobbing, which he wasn't able to stop. It was something his body and mind had been waiting for for a long time. Sev'ra took a seat next to him and pulled him in for a hug. D'razz leaned against her, and didn't do anything to try and stop the flow of tears. This time he would let them all out, and then he would let them leave. For good.

"I know…" Sev'ra said, her voice radiating sympathy and reassurance. "Just let it out, D'razz. Just let it out…."

After several minutes, D'razz's anguish finally dried up. He managed to regain his composure, a strange new feeling burning deep within his soul. He sat up straight again, and Sev'ra let go of him. D'razz looked at the floor, his eyes focusing intently on one spot. He searched his feelings for answers to what this new feeling was, and suddenly it came to him.

Peace. Clarity. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt truly at peace with himself, and he felt a fiery determination in him, a strong sense of knowing exactly what he needed to do, and a powerful confidence in his chances of success. He now knew who he was. D'razz Stegma, the one who would finally restore honor and justice to his family's name. He would go forth, confront his mother, and bring her back. He would bring her back to the side of the light, no matter what.

Sev'ra could see the fire in his eyes as he went through his inner monologue.

"Feels good doesn't it?" She asked.

D'razz looked up at the wall in front of him, then stood up. His stance had changed, as well. He stood taller, prouder than before. He knew what he had to do. But first….

D'razz walked over to the desk, and picked up the corner of the small cloth placemat which sat atop it. Underneath the edge of it sat a small key, which dangled from a long, necklace-length string, which was hand-woven with bright orange, turquoise, and gold. The place where the key had been was surrounded by a silhouette of dust-free desk where the cloth had been. D'razz picked up the key and pulled the string over his head, letting it dangle from his neck. He then walked over to the small bookshelf against the side wall opposite the desk, shuffled a few books around, and pulled a small crowbar out from behind a small stack of them. Crowbar and key in tow, he walked back over to the bed. Sev'ra watched with an inquisitive look on her face as D'razz got down on his knees and lifted the edge of the covers to look underneath the bed, then crawled in so that only his waist and legs were still exposed.

He looked for the same thing he had always looked for; a curled up piece of wood in one of the floorboards. And sure enough, there it was, the tiny edge that had given him so many splinters that he'd had to hide from his mother. He reached under the bed with the crowbar, and wedged it under the lip of wood. He pulled the crowbar back with the same motion he always had, and a small chunk of floorboard came loose. D'razz pulled himself out from underneath the bed, and stood up, his arms, chest, and face coated in dust. He reached under the bed frame and began to pull it away from the wall. Sev'ra silently stood up and helped him. In seconds, the bed was in the center of the small room and the pried bit of flooring was revealed. D'razz climbed up and over the bed, and bent down, using the crowbar to finish peeling out the piece of floorboard. Once it came loose, he picked it up and set it on the bed behind him.

He reached down into the hole that lay beneath the floor. In it was exactly what D'razz had hoped for: a small, faded red toolbox, which was secured with an old, rusty padlock. D'razz pulled the key up from his chest and tenderly inserted it into the lock. He twisted it, and the mechanism opened with a satisfying click. D'razz set the toolbox down on the bed, and slowly opened the lid.

Inside, he found a small, rectangular object wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it to reveal a little leather-bound book, which he opened with the most gentle of movements.

Inside was his life. Pictures, drawings, and writing from his entire life, from the day his grandmother had given him the book until the afternoon before she was killed. Including pictures of his family, himself, and his environment, all in his own unique, cartoony drawing style.

He rewrapped the book in its cloth and tucked it away into his jacket pocket. Then he reached back into the toolbox. There was another cloth, draped over a strange shape in the bottom of the box. He pulled up the cloth to find exactly what he'd hoped to find:

The disassembled pieces of a large, handcrafted wooden crossbow.

The main section of the gun was once piece, the limb which went across the front was one separate one, and a large magnifying scope the third. He took the pieces and held them up, feeling the slickness of the polish the wood was coated in, running his fingers along its smooth surface. He looked down at the shoulder stock of the gun, and found the same carved engraving.

" _D'razz"_ it said in native Dathomirian script. He twisted the gun around to the back of the stock, the part which rested against his shoulder, and found the other part he treasured so much.

Carved narrowly in tiny, jagged script along the side of the stock was a message, carved into the wood by Co'ronn herself. D'razz read it again for the first time in years.

 _D'razz,_

 _I know I'm not the greatest sister in the galaxy. And nor am I very good with words, so I'll keep this simple. I'm a soldier. I always have been. I'm stubborn, arrogant, and passionate about my beliefs. In that respect, I'm exactly like Nui'ya. I assume that's why we're always at each other's throats. But you're not like that. You're not like anyone, in fact. You have a kind heart. You always want to believe in the best of people, and you're trusting. The resistance, the people I spend my days with, all have a firm belief in the same just cause. But I've come to realize that just because someone's fighting for the right cause, it doesn't mean they're a nice person. In fact, most of the men in my division (and most of them are men) are all buff, misogynistic douchebags. But you're not like any of them. You are a shining spark of light in a world long covered by darkness. Your innocence and wonder has always inspired me to be better than myself, even if it doesn't always show through. But just know that I love you, D'razz. And I will always look after you, even into the next life._

D'razz smiled as tears welled up in his eyes. He'd forgotten how powerful the message was. When he'd still been on the farm, he'd read the message virtually every night. It had lost a lot of its meaning. But now, with the gears of fate churning around him, Co'ronn's message was the last thing he needed to accept that, no matter how much he'd tried to avoid it in the past, his time was now.

He assembled the gun, going through the same motions he'd done every evening for 10 years of his life. He was 20 years old, now. Less than a year away from a full-blown adult. And he was ready.

He turned to Sev'ra, and held the gun out for her to inspect.

She took it, her movements as gentle as they could be, as if she was holding something made of glass. She inspected it, tested its weight, and ran her hands along the various mechanisms. Her eyes went wide when she inspected the firing mechanism.

"Holy shit," she breathed. "This thing looks like its got one hell of a kick. I mean, yes, it does fire solid rounds instead of blaster bolts, but…."

Her voice trailed off. She handed the crossbow back to D'razz.

"Co'ronn wanted to be a weapons designer," D'razz said. "She was always sketching new and exciting gun designs. And she always had this fixation on guns that fired non-blaster rounds. I never really understood that at the time."

"Maybe it's because of what little the resistance had in the way of resources back then," Sev'ra offered. "They were far from organized back then."

"Yeah, you're right. I'm sure that's what it was," D'razz said. "Oh, and speaking of the resistance, do you think you guys would have any means of ammunition for this?"

Sev'ra's eyes lit up and a wicked smile formed across her lips.

"Hell yeah we do," she said. "Oh, boy, do we ever."


	11. Chapter Eleven: NaRei

**Chapter Eleven: Nara and Rei**

 **Author's Note:** Hey, guys! DoctorPortal here, with another chapter of Stormbreaker. I'm starting something a little different with this one, and I'll need your feedback to see if you guys like it! So, whereas before, when I would have a chapter with two groups of characters that were separated, I'd have basically write it like two smaller chapters, which I'd separate with a line break, and maybe the action would switch back and forth. But now, I'm gonna try a new tactic, where each new chapter alternates between groups (in this case, between D'razz and Sev'ra and the rest of the crew). What this means is that the chapters may be a little bit shorter, but it'll also mean that there'll be more focus on each group, with more detail and more stuff happening. I'll also title the chapters depending on who they're focused on. So yeah, that's it! This is all very experimental, and I'd greatly appreciate knowing from you guys which method you prefered: the old one, or the new one! Please, please let me know. I live to make you guys enjoy this stuff! But anyway, that's all from me. Enjoy Chapter 11!

~DoctorPortal

* * *

Nova sat in his pajamas on one of the couches in the CLA. Adorning his torso was the tattered remains of his old red crew shirt, and a pair of long pajama pants covered his lower half. He leaned against the holotable, sifting through multiple news feeds and entertainment sites all at once, as they were suspended in midair above the table's surface. He let out a heavy of boredom and switched off the holotable. He leaned back against the couch, sliding slightly down its surface. He looked his head back and sighed again.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're bored out of your mind," Nara's voice said suddenly. Nova bolted upright, spinning rapidly around to find her face to face with him, her head resting on her elbows against the back of the couch. She had a sly smile on her face, and her eyes twinkled with amusement.

"Jeez, Nara. Don't sneak up on me like that," Nova said. "And yeah, to answer your question, yeah. I'm bored as hell."

"Well, is there anything you need to do maintenance-wise?" Nara asked.

"Nope. Kaz is taking care of it."

"Any… Design ideas come to you recently?" She asked.

"Nope. I've already invented hard-light projections, portable force field generators, and two different kinds of self-replenishing energy sources. What else is there to do?"

"Build a starship?" Nara offered.

"Done that. Twice," Nova replied.

"Large scale stuff, sure. But what about something made for the atmosphere?"

"Like what?" Nova asked.

"Like, say, a landing craft." Nara said. "One which was stylish, yet functional, and when it lands on the surface of a planet, it like, deploys a bunch of speeders or something."

Nova's eyes went wide at that. His jaw went slack, and his eyes began moving rapidly in incredibly small motions as millions of designs and prototypes began to race through his mind.

"There's that look," Nara said, smiling. "What've you got?"

"Speeders," Nova said, his face awash with inspiration. "And a landing craft. Ooh, boy. I've got some drawing to do."

* * *

Nova spent the next several days in the ship's engineering lab. Nara watched from the doorway as he manipulated a strange piece of equipment. It looked to Nara like someone had taken a simple, non-holographic touch screen display, given it holographic capabilities, and mounted it on a gimbal so it could pivot from flat to angled and tilted any which way at the user's whim. But what Nova was doing with it was fascinating for Nara to watch. He held a large, fancy-looking stylus in his hand, which he used to draw on the surface when it was angled towards him. Then, he would grab the edges of the surface without warning and pivot it flat, then flip a switch on the side to activate holographic mode, thus bringing his drawings to life in fully-rendered 3D. He'd sculpt and play with them for a while, then would usually grab the whole model and drag it into the holographic trash can that stood up from one of the upper corners. Then he'd pivot the surface back to angled and start all over again.

Nara eventually left him to it and walked back to her quarters for the night. When she pressed her thumb to the small, circular button beside the door, it ran a brief scan of her thumbprint and opened the door. Inside, she heard the faint hiss of the shower running, and the strong smell of a large quantity of shampoo and hair conditioner seeped in from the bathroom. Nara smiled to herself as she stepped over to the closet, removing her purple hoodie and Jedi tunic, tossing both into the small hamper that sat against the back wall of the closet. She sifted through the few clothing items she had as they hung on the rack, first picking out a thin, skin tight black shirt with long sleeves. Then she continued sifting through the rack until she found what she was looking for. She reached up and unhooked one of the hangers from the rack, and carefully fed the ends of it through the bottom of the shirt it held. The tattered, faded remains of her old crew shirt. It was over three years old, and had long since gotten too small for her, but she could never bear to part with it. The word _Stormbreaker_ could still be read across the front of the shirt, the unique solver lettering still sparkling, even after all this time. She slipped it over her head, struggling as she always did to get her arms through the sleeves without ripping bigger holes in the shirt. It barely covered anything, and left most of her midriff exposed. She'd had to start wearing the black under layer just to keep warm at night. As she pulled on a pair of long, comfy sweatpants and emerged from the closet, Rei walked out with a towel covering her body, and another one wrapped around her head, holding her hair up so it would dry. She smiled when she saw Nara, flicking her eyebrows up once in acknowledgement.

"So, what's up with you?" Nara asked.

"Oh, not much," Rei said. "I was doing some target practice in the arena a little while ago."

"Oh?" Nara inquired, tilting her head. "Any particular reason?"

"Not really," Rei said, stepping into the closet. "I got inspired by that training session I saw with you and Nova," she said. Rei dropped the towel immodestly and gathered her clothes without closing the door, which made Nara instinctively turn her head and hold her hand up to it, trying to hide the vibrant red blush that flushed her cheeks. Rei laughed, seeing her reaction.

"Oh, come on," she teased, "It's not like we're teenagers anymore," she said, and emerged from the closet, fully-clothed. Rei reached up and brought her hand down, and continued to hold it. She leaned in close to Nara, making eye contact.

"And besides, It's not as if that's the first time you've seen me like that, now is it? Certainly not after last night..." she said, a rueful grin on her face. Nara's blush only deepened.

"Well, yeah…," she managed. "It's just, I dunno…"

Rei kissed her, cutting her off. She backed off after a few seconds.

"Unusual?" Rei offered, smiling.

"Heh…, I, I guess…." Nara managed.

"Well, I'm not surprised," Rei said. "I mean, you didn't exactly have much of a chance to build that kind of a relationship with anyone before we met, right?"

"True," Nara replied.

Rei leaned in further and spoke in a hushed tone, causing a chill to run down Nara's spine.

"Well, for what's it worth," Rei said, her voice thick with seduction, "You were amazing last night." Nara thought she was going to faint. Rei backed off, and turned towards the door.

"Come on, I need some coffee. Join me in the CLA?" She asked.

"Right behind you," Nara replied, her face still bright red, and followed her out.

* * *

The rest of the day went by fairly quickly. Nara spent most of the time she had with Rei, basically having a romantic day to themselves. They ate, played games, and sat around talking. Occasionally, they both snuck in to spy on Nova, who was still intensely working at the desk in the corner of the CLA, and never once noticed them. Before they knew it, the familiar three-tone chime indicated the transition into the ship's night mode. The primary light fixtures all across the ship dimmed slowly, and in their place, millions of tiny LEDs in the ceilings lit up in varying size and brightness. Against the glossy dark blue paint the ceilings were painted in, it made for a masterfully-crafted illusion of a starry night sky. Nara and Rei walked together to the lift, locking hands once the door had slid shut. They took the lift down to the Synergy Drive chamber, as it was their favorite spot to go to in the ship during the night cycle. When the lift slid open, the same beauty greeted them. The chamber was almost dark, lit only from high above by an even more impressive LED sky. And before them, the Synergy Drive spun, and generated the spectacular show which only the two of them seemed to know about.

A strange side effect of the way the Synergy Drive ran was that, as its power came from the life forces of eight different beings, it took on a certain life of its own. And when the ship was in night mode, the glow in the large, central sphere did something spectacular:

It projected their dreams.

Nara and Rei sat down on the floor of the chamber, leaning against one another, watching as beautiful scenes and images from the minds of the crew shone through the surface like apparitions in a crystal ball, swirling and changing every few seconds. Nara and Rei had made a game out of it; whenever a new image came up, they'd try to guess who's mind it was coming from. Occasionally, it was something from one of the two of them, and the images that they saw were often the sort of thing that only deepened their relationship. But today they didn't. They simply sat there, enjoying each other's embrace, and soon they both entered the realm of sleep in each other's arms, serenaded by the soft hum of the ship's engines.


	12. Chapter Twelve: The Forest

**Chapter Twelve: The Forest**

When it came to the resistance base, D'razz didn't know what to expect. He imagined it would be relatively advanced at first, then his image changed to something much more primitive. What it turned out to be was far better than anything he could have imagined.

The large, square compound sat in the middle of a large forest, which itself sat atop a large mountain range. The base was only accessible from the air. Dozens of small airspeeders - all of which were so ancient they realistically belonged in a junkyard - flew here and there across the base, but then he began to take notice of other things - much smaller things - which were also airborne. At first he thought they were speeder bikes, but as their ship drew closer to the landing site, he could see that they weren't speeders at all.

They were soldiers. With wings.

"What are _those?!"_ D'razz said, his voice awash with shock.

A wicked smile appeared on Sev'ra's face.

"Those, D'razz, are soldiers."

"Yeah, but what are they wearing?" D'razz asked, his face flat against the glass.

"The Dathomir Engineering DE1-T4 Long-Distance Gliding Apparatus, otherwise known as the Delta Wing," Sev'ra answered. "They're specialized devices which were invented by our own, and are used by only the most elite soldiers in the academy. And the best part? They're incredibly easy to make, and they're mostly made from wood."

"Wood?" D'razz asked. "How?" Don't they need propulsion? How wouldn't engine exhaust make them combust?"

"They're all coated in a unique flameproof polishing substance. The wood is necessary because it's easy to make, easy to replace, and it's lightweight. Kinda necessary when you're trying to make personal flying devices."

* * *

When Rei awoke, Nara was gone. She stood up and walked over to a wall panel, tapping once on it to wake it up. The display said it was 11:27 A.M., ship time. Rei stretched her hands over her head and yawned. Despite having slept on the floor, she felt remarkably well-rested.

Then she noticed the small metal tray next to where she'd been. It looked like it had a simple metal dish cover, and there was a not stuck to it, written in Nara's remarkably elegant handwriting. She sat down next to the cart to read it.

 _Rei,_

 _Sorry about not being there when you wake up. Nova wanted me at the training session bright and early today, and what can I say? I'm technically still his Palawan. Can't exactly say no. But, if it makes you feel better, I tried desperately to make you breakfast._

Rei laughed, remembering how commonly Nara's attempts at cooking resulted in disaster. She continued reading.

 _Needless to say, I nearly set the whole ship on fire. Again. Nova seemed pretty angry at first, but then he collapsed laughing when he tried to scold me. Plus, Winson fixed it, which is why the food you'll find on this tray is actually edible. So, anyway, enjoy the amazing food that Winson made. I Love you. See you in a bit._

 _~Nara_

 _P.S. feel free to come watch the training session if you're up before noon. I'll be in the arena, and who knows? Maybe Nova will let me try dodging actual blaster fire this time._

The note left Rei with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. She stood, stretched again, then sat back down to help herself to whatever Winson had prepared. She lifted the shiny metal cover to find a small plate of eggs, sausage, and toast, arranged neatly and cooked to perfection. One thing was for sure: Winson knew how to cook.

After she'd finished, Rei took the tray and dishes and took them to the kitchen herself. Being raised as she had, she felt a certain need to take care of her mess herself, rather than let the ship's automated cleaning system take care of it for her. She navigated her way through the ship to the training arena, once again hanging back in the doorway once it opened.

Inside, whereas Rei expected to find Nova and Nara dueling in the arena's center, the door instead opened into a jungle. The sound of birds chirping and the smell of a live jungle greeted her nose as she stepped through the archway in confusion.

"What the hell…?" She breathed. She stepped further into the thick woods, and the door slid closed behind her. As soon as it did, Rei turned around just in time to see it vanish into thin air.

"What the _hell?"_ Rei asked again, even more confused. Then, she heard the unmistakeable sound of blaster fire, from somewhere a ways off. She swallowed hard and ventured forth into the brush.

Rei pulled her hand terminal out of her pocket and turned it on, opening the app for environmental scans. It told her that she was in a population class 3 jungle, the kind of jungle that had experienced undisturbed growth for hundreds of years. It gave no evidence that she'd been on a starship in deep space moments before. Shaking her head in frustration, Rei put the terminal away and ventured further. She quickly came across a river, an actual river, with flowing water, and began to follow it, until she was stopped by the sound of more blaster fire. It was close. She continued following the sound to its source, and made her way to a massive, open area which would have been a clearing, were it not for the canopy of gigantic tree levels that formed a sort of dome over it.

Before she could marvel for very long, Rei felt a sudden impact against her side, and felt all the sensations associated with being flung backwards into the bushes behind her. When she managed to sit up, she saw Nara, lightsaber in hand but not activated, crouched down as low as she could.

"Nara, what the-"

Nara put a finger to her lips, indicating for Rei to be quiet for a moment. She looked up, listening. Rei listened too. In the air above them, she heard the distinctive, unmistakable whine of a TIE Fighter's engines. They seemed to be getting louder. Then, Nara pressed the switch on her lightsaber, and the tall purple blade sprung into life with a distinct sound. It hummed softly in Nara's hand as she remained crouched, waiting. Then, she whipped around and brought the saber up, performing a series of bunts and slashes to flawlessly deflect a flurry of blaster fire which burst through the canopy of leaves. Nara bounced every single shot away from them.

As the sound of the TIE Fighter's engines were right on top of them, Nara suddenly whipped out her left arm, and held out her hand in a clenching motion. Rei's heartbeat went into overdrive as she noticed that the TIE's engine note had stopped changing in volume, and was sustained right above them. She looked at Nara, and immediately regretted doing so. Nara's eyes were ablaze with purple energy, which flickered and curled around the sides of her face. She looked like a force of nature. One which, to Rei, was absolutely terrifying.

Neither averting her upward gaze nor moving her left arm, Nara deactivated the lightsaber in her right hand and holstered it. Then, she brought her right hand up and flicked it in a downwards slash, causing the leaves above them to be flung aside, revealing a black and red TIE Fighter suspended in midair above them, struggling to get away. The purple aura surrounding it confirmed for Rei that Nara had done the impossible: she'd _caught_ a TIE fighter.

Nara reached her right hand out and brought it up alongside her left, and an overlapping purple circle appeared alongside the first. Nara brought her hands together, then strained heavily as she tried to pry them apart. She began to cry out, a low sustained sound which grew with intensity as she pried her hands apart. Rei scrambled back in fear, stopping only when she rammed against a tree. Rei watched in horror as the wings of the TIE Fighter began to bend, then she curled into a ball, knowing what came next and not wanting to see it. And seconds later, with a sound like a lightning bolt striking a hyperdrive, the TIE fighter cracked apart like an egg and exploded. Nara's hands flew down to her sides, the tension in them released. Rei looked up at Nara, tears streaming down her face. Nara was breathing heavily, and her eyes were wide. There was an almost feral look about them, and a sense of anger and hate that Rei had never seen before.

Nara turned to look at her, preparing to smile and crack a joke, but stopped dead when she saw the look on Rei's face. The horror and fear in her eyes. Nara felt as though a knife went through her chest at the realization that she had practically traumatized her best friend. She was just about to say something when suddenly, the forest around them vanished, and they were back in the training arena. Around them a series of holoprojectors receded into the wall and disappeared. Nara looked around for several moments, before a voice pierced the silence and echoed throughout the room.

"Nara!" it barked. She whipped around, and saw Nova near the far door, his hand against a wall panel. He looked stone-faced; his jaw was tight and his eyes were hard and focused. Not a single trace of kindness or sympathy was in his voice when he spoke.

"We need to talk," he said.

* * *

Nova, Nara, and Winson sat alone in the CLA. Nova paced left and right across the room, Winson sat patiently on one of the couches, and Nara sat in one of the armchairs. Nova muttered quietly to himself as he paced, which made the experience all the more unnerving for Nara. She knew she was about to get chewed out, and wasn't sure she could handle it. Any seconds now, she expected Nova to turn and face her and start screaming at her, as her father had always done. But instead, he paced until he was in front of her, then he turned and knelt in front of her.

"Nara," Nova began, his voice remarkably gentle, "Before I go any further, do you understand the magnitude of what you did in the arena today?"

Nara nodded silently, trying to stop her eyes from welling up.

"Are you sure?" Nova said. Nara looked down, pondered briefly, then looked back up at Nova. She bit her lip.

"Okay," Nova said. "Then allow me to explain."

Nara stared at him intently, prepared to listen to every word.

"You see, Nara, the Force is like a game of Dejarik chess. Both sides have their pieces, and each side has their talents and strategies, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Being able to utilize these factors within your pieces gives you special advantages over your opponents. But, in parallel, there are times when you can find yourself too overconfident in your pieces' abilities, and can push them to the other end of the board…. Right into the enemy's hands. Then they can use your own skills against you, and deteriorate the skill and progress you've obtained and grown so confident with. You let yourself get taken by your opponent. And that only ever leads to one thing: the Dark Side. Nara, what you did back there was the sort of thing that Daniel would do during the last few years we spent on Kamino. And we both know how he ended up. I'm telling you, for your sake, that you can't give in to temptations like that, or you risk corrupting yourself. And as the great Master Yoda once said, once you start down the dark path, there's no turning back."


	13. Book I Revisions SNEAK PREVIEW

**Author's Note:**

Hey guys! DoctorPortal here, and I've got something really special for you guys today. Recently, I've been hit by some new inspiration, one which I think you guys will like:

I'm rewriting a whole bunch of stuff in the first book. I know, I know, it's strange, but just hear me out.

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time now. I want to rewrite the characters' introductions from the ground up, as well as eliminate all the loose ends in the plot and tie everything together better. Some things are getting HUGE overhauls, and I for one am super excited! So, why am I telling you all this? Well, first of all, I'm going to be temporarily suspending further updates to Book II Don't worry, though, it's only temporary, I promise! And to make up for that, I have a sneak preview of one of the reworked chapters to share with you guys! This is the new-and-improved introduction to one of the key characters, Nara Mukure. If you haven't read the old one in a while, I'd highly recommend opening it in a new tab and having yourself a side-by-side comparison! Oh, and also note that this chapter isn't final. It's not even finished, in fact. Hence why I'm calling it a "sneak preview". But anyway, I hope you enjoy, and be sure to check back fairly soon to some updates in Book I of this series! Enjoy!

~DoctorPortal

* * *

 **The Imprisoned Princess**

The moons of Naboo hung high in the sky, casting a dim light on the gardens and terraces of Theed Palace. From one of the castle's many towers, a young girl stared out the large glass window, lost in thought. She was of moderate height, with dark brown hair which fell to her shoulders, a heart-shaped face, and large, innocent eyes which were the color of honey. She stared out the window, watching, wondering what it was like beyond the confines of her large bedroom.

A soft creaking sound was heard as the door behind her opened, letting in a stream of bright light, which illuminated the otherwise dark room. An older-looking man peered around the edge of the large wooden door, smiling warmly at the girl. The man was tall, had short brown hair which was graying around the edges, a thick, well-trimmed mustache, and deep, emerald green eyes. He had a warm smile across his face as he looked in.

"Nara?" he asked. The girl looked around, answering to the name. "Oh, hey, Winson," she said, then turned back to face the window.

"May I come in?" Winson asked delicately.

Nara nodded once without looking back. Winson entered the room and closed the door, his left arm concealing something behind his back. He approached Nara slowly, his grin fading into a look of sorrowful sympathy. When he reached Nara, he rest his right hand on her shoulder. She still didn't look at him.

"Happy birthday, young one," Winson whispered, pulling his left arm out from behind his back. In his hand, he held a small white plate, upon which sat a small brown bundt cake. Nara finally looked down to see it, then accepted it from Winson, who pulled a shiny metal fork out of his back pocket. Nara took the plate and utensil and sat down onto the cold marble floor. Winson sat down across from her with a heavy sigh.

Nara stabbed the corner of the cake and took a bite, the rich, sweet taste of freshly baked fudge filling her senses. She glanced up at Winson, a look of gratitude in her eyes. He simply nodded in reply. The two sat silently for a few moments while Nara worked on the cake. Finally, Winson spoke up.

"You'd better be careful that your father doesn't see your window with the curtains pulled. You know how he gets when he sees that."

Nara swallowed, then finally spoke. Her voice was moderately high-pitched, yet deep at the same time.

"Yeah, I know," she said, "I just can't help it, you know?"

Winson smiled, then sighed.

"I can't blame you," he said. "After all, I'm sure being locked up in your room your whole life with no one but your old butler and the occasional homeschool teacher to keep you company certainly doesn't fulfill one's natural desire for companionship and freedom…."

"Yeah," Nara said in agreement."

Another few moments of silence passed before Winson spoke again.

"So. Seventeen years old," he said. "I still can't wrap my head around that."

"Right?" Nara said through a mouth full of fudge, then laughed at her crudity, struggling to keep her mouth closed. Winson laughed as well. Nara swallowed again, and the two sat in companionable silence for a short while.

"There's something else I've been waiting to give you, Nara," Winson said.

She looked up at him, fork sticking out of mouth at a twisted angle.

"Mmm?" she inquired, not opening her mouth.

Winson twisted around and pulled a small, square box out of his back pocket. It was white, with a neat, purple bow. Nara's favorite color was purple.

"Nara took the fork out of her mouth and swallowed again, then set the fork down on the plate. She picked up a handkerchief and wiped her mouth with it, then took the box from Winson. She tenderly pulled at the strings, and the bow came undone in her hands. She lifted the lid of the box, and a sudden burst of light briefly blinded her eyes. She leaned back from it, using her other hand to shield her eyes from the light. After a few seconds, the light subsided, and Nara looked back to see where it had come from.

Inside the box, there sat a necklace, with a large, softly-glowing pendant on it. It was a gold and silver carving of what looked like a brilliant sword, which had two diamond shapes at the top and bottom of the hilt, and a crown overlapping the center of the grip. The blade of the sword seemed to be filled with a strange energy, which glowed softly purple.

"Winson….," Nara breathed, "It's beautiful…." She looked up at him, her eyes honey-colored eyes gleaming with happiness and gratitude.

Winson smiled.

"That pendant is unique," Winson explained. "It was handmade by an unknown craftsman, hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's been passed down through the Royal Family for millennia, and now, it belongs to you."

Nara looked puzzled. "But, wait, if it's been passed down through my family, then why do you have it?" she asked.

Winson smiled again.

"Well, this was given to me for safekeeping, to be give to you when you became of age."

"By whom?" Nara asked.

Winson sighed, not looking forward to what he had to say.

"By your mother, the day before she died."

 _To Be Continued..._


End file.
